.1 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


HESTER    STANLEY 


ST.    MARKS. 


BY 

HARRIET   PRESCOTT   SPOFFORD, 

AUTHOR  OF  "THE  MARQUIS  OF  CARABAS,"  "THE  AMBER  GODS,"  ETC. 


lit!)  Illustration*. 


BOSTON: 

ROBERTS     BROTHERS. 
1882 


Copyright,  1882, 
BY  ROBERTS   BROTHERS. 


UNIVERSITY  PRESS: 
JOHN  WILSON  AND  SON,  CAMBRIDGE. 


HESTER  STANLEY  AT  ST.  MARKS. 


CHAPTER  I. 

~TT  was  recreation  in  the  great  school-room  at 
Waterways,  during  the  gloomy  sunset-hour, 
when  books  and  pencils  were  thrown  by,  and  the 
girls  were  left  to  their  own  wills  by  the  tired 
teachers,  as  glad  as  they  of  the  intermission. 

The  girls  —  a  thousand  pardons,  the  young  ladies 
—  were  improving  the  hour;  these  in  locked 
embrace  sauntering  up  and  down  the  open  space  ; 
those  in  coteries  discussing  some  tremendous 
secret ;  others  amusing  themselves  with  the  black- 
boards and  crayons,  and  the  rest  busy  with  romp- 
ing games. 

All  were  thus  occupied  but  one,  —  a  dark  little 
body  in  a  black  gown,  who  sat  alone  in  the  big 
bay-window  that  overlooked  the  harbor,  and 


4  HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.   MARKS. 

watched  a  long,  low  steamer  that  through  the  rain 
and  mist  was  ploughing  out  to  sea. 

It  was  Hester  Stanley,  thinking  of  her  father,  — 
in  just  such  a  steamer,  maybe,  —  on  his  way  to 

I' 


.  cross  the  continent  and  take  passage  for  an  Austra- 


lasian port.  From  this  port  he  expected  to  sail 
to  the  islands  from  whence  he  came,  —  her  father, 
who  was  all  she  -had,  whom  she  adored,  and  whom 
she  might  not  see  again,  as  he  had  jestingly  said, 
till  Miss  Marks  was  done  with  her. 

As  the  last  outline  of  the  steamer  and  its  black 
plumes  disappeared,  the  little  hands,  that  had  been 
nervously  folding  and  unfolding  while  they  lay  in 
her  lap,  suddenly  hid  her  face,  and  all  the  slender 
frame  shook  with  a  storm  of  sobs  that  she  vainly 
endeavored  to,  suppress. 

In  the  midst  of  them  a  hand  was  laid  upon 
her  shoulder.  "  I  would  n't,"  said  a  voice  in  her 
ear. 

She  started  ;  started  just  enough  to  make  room 
for  another  girl  to  sit  beside  her  —  a  tall,  red- 
haired,  good-natured-looking  girl,  who  tilted  back 
Hester's  chin  on  the  tip  of  her  finger  till  she  could 
survey  the  tear-stained  face,  and  then  deliberately 


HESTEK   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MAKKS.  5 

took  her  handkerchief  and  wiped  away  the  fresh 
gush  of  tears. 

"  Come,"  said  she,  "  I  Ve  been  there.  I  know  all 
about  it.  There  's  nothing  in  the  world  so  bad  as 
homesickness,  and  nothing  half  so  silly.  What 's 
the  use  ?  They  're  having  a  beautiful  time  at  home 
this  minute,  without  a  thought  of  us.  The  lamps 
are  just  brought  in,  and  they  are  going  to  have  hot 
muffins  for  tea,  and  they  're  not  even  wishing  we 
had  one." 

"  I  'm  not  homesick,"  said  Hester. 

"  Not  homesick  !  You  'd  better  !  Not  homesick 
in  this  pandemonium,  as  Miss  Brown  calls  it,  this 
place  of  yelling  girls,  without  a  centre-table,  with- 
out a  rocking-chair,  without  —  " 

"  I  'in  not  homesick  ! "  exclaimed  Hester,  with  a 
fresh  burst  of  tears.  "  I  never  had  a  home." 

"  Never  had  a  home  ? " 

"  Not  what  you  call  a  home." 

"  Why,  what  sort  of  a  country  did  you  come 
from  ? " 

"  I  never  even  had  a  country." 

"  What,  no  home,  no  country !  What  in  the 
world  did  you  have  ? " 


6  HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MARKS. 

"  My  father  !  "  cried  Hester.  "  And  now  I  Ve 
lost  him.  And  I  shan't  see  him  for  years,  if  I 
ever  do." 

"  If  you  ever  do !  I  like  that.  What 's  to  hinder, 
please  ?  He  was  alive  the  last  four  years,  so  he 's 
just  as  likely  to  be  the  next  four.  And  as  for 
you,  if  you're  not  alive,  you'll  never  know  it,  so 
what  odds  does  it  make  ?  That 's  what  I  call  intel- 
lectual philosophy;  and  when  I  don't  have  my 
lesson,  I  put  some  such  poser  to  Miss  Brown,  and 
it  takes  her  so  long  tot  show  me  my  error,  that  the 
time  's  up  before  she  finds  out  I  have  n't  opened 
the  book.  Oh,  you  think  that 's  wrong,  do  you  ? " 

"I  —  I  —  you  know  —  if  papa  puts  me  here  to 
learn,  and  I  come,  and  I  don't  learn,  I  —  I  —  " 

"  Feel  like  a  swindle.  So  do  I.  And  I  always 
mean  never  to  do  it  again  —  till  next  time.  So 
you  're  going  to  be  a  little  bookworm  ?  " 

"  I  must  study.  Papa  means  me  to  be  a  teacher 
out  there,  where  they  need  them,  and  I  can  do 
them  good." 

"  Oh  dear  me  !  You  do  good,  —  you  who  need 
somebody  to  do  good  to  you  ?  Where  is  '  out 
there'?" 


HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MARKS.  7 

"  In  the  South  Sea  Islands,  you  know,  where  I 
was  born  —  " 

"  Where  you  were  born  ?  Dear,  dear !  are  you 
an  African  or  an  Asian  or —  " 

"  I  suppose  I  'm  a  Polynesian,"  said  Hester, 
half  laughing.  "  I  'm  dark  enough,  you  see,  — 
I  'm  so  tanned.  But  papa  is  an  American.  He 
is  a  great  merchant  there.  He  has  ships  coming 
and  going.  His  name  is  Stanley,  —  I  am  Hester 
Stanley." 

"And  I  am  Marcia  Meyer,  —  an  ' incorwigible 
girl,'  Miss  Brown  will  tell  you.  She  struggles 
with  her  rs." 

"  I  shan't  believe  her,"  said  Hester,  brightening. 

"  Don't  you.  I  'm  as  good  as  the  general  run. 
And  I  should  n't  wonder  if  we  were  great  friends. 
What  are  you  going  to  study  ? " 

"Everything.  I  don't  know  anything.  I've 
never  been  at  school,  you  know.  That  is,  only  a 
little,  now  and  then,  when  I  felt  like  it,  at  the 
nuns'  school.  You  won't  want  me  for  a  friend 
when  you  find  out  what  a  dunce  I  am." 

"  Shan't  I  ?  You  '11  want  me  —  all  the  more. 
Are  you  a  dunce  about  everything  ? " 


8  HESTEE   STANLEY  AT   ST.   MAEKS. 

"Yes, —  I  guess  so.  All  I  can  do  is  to  dance, 
and  embroider,  and  play  on  the  guitar,  and  sing, 
and  — ' 

"  On  the  guitar  ? "  cried  Marcia.  "  Have  you  got 
one  ?  Here  ?  Oh,  do  play  on  it  right  away  ! " 

"  I  can't.  It 's  with  my  luggage,  and  I  don't 
know  where  that  is." 

"  I  '11  find  out.  I  don't  believe  they  '11  take 
that  away  from  you.  They  would  if  it  was  candy. 
And  we  do  as  we  please  in  recreation.  I  '11  get  it ; 
the  servants  and  I  are  great  chums." 

Marcia  whisked  out  of  the  room,  and  just  as 
Hester  was  relapsing  into  gloom,  she  reappeared 
with  the  little  instrument,  which  Hester  swiftly 
and  deftly  tuned,  and  then  sent  the  notes  of  a  fan- 
dango ringing  through  the  room. 

For  a  moment  the  silence  of  surprise  filled 
the  place ;  and  then  Marcia,  with  her  arms  arched 
above  her  head,  as  if  playing  invisible  castanets, 
was  dancing  like  a  girl  in  the  tarantella;  and 
directly  afterward  the  whole  amazed  congregation 
of  girls  were  clasped  in  each  other's  arms  and 
whirling  in  a  waltz,  in  the  midst  of  which  the 
doors  opened,  and  Miss  Marks  and  Miss  Parks 


HESTER   STANLEY  AT   ST.    MARKS.  9 

and  Miss  Brown  and  Madame  Cherdidi  stood 
witnesses  of  the  scene. 

"  Tableau ! "  cried  Marcia.  And  at  the  word 
every  girl  paused,  suspended  in  the  attitude  in 
which  the  command  found  her. 

"Fine  exercise  for  a  rainy  night,"  said  Miss 
Marks  pleasantly.  "And  now  the  study-bell  will 
strike." 

In  two  minutes  the  lamps  were  lit,  and  there 
was  silence  save  for  the  hum  of  study  in  the  room, 
and  Marcia's  voice  expostulating  in  an  undertone 
at  Miss  Brown's  desk, — discipline  being  but  slight 
during  this  one  hour,  —  "Indeed,  indeed,  it  was 
all  my  remissness." 

"  I  have  no  doubt  it  was  your  wemissness,  what- 
ever it  was,"  Hester  could  hear  replied.  "  But,  as 
it  happens,  there  was  no  wemissness  about  it.  I 
am  glad  the  young  ladies  were  no  worse  employed, 
and  that  Miss  Stanley  has  so  soon  wecovered  fwom 
the  loss  of  her  pawent." 

"She  hasn't,  Miss  Brown;  she  hasn't.  I  got 
the  guitar  and  brought  it  to  her  on  purpose  to 
make  her  forget  — 

"  Humph  ! "  said  Miss  Brown.     "  I  was  told  the 


10  HESTER   STANLEY  AT  ST.   MARKS. 

child  was  disconsolate,  and  I  find  her  playing 
dances  like  a  Scotch  fiddler.  I  don't  think  she 's 
sufferwing.  No,  I  shall  not  gwant  the  wequest. 
She  will  follow  the  wegular  woutine  of  the  last 
comer,  —  the  last  bed  in  the  dormitowy,  the  last 
desk  on  the  floor,  —  and  must  win  places  more 
advanced  by  her  efforts." 

"  But,  Miss  Brown  — 

"Wuii'  to  your  seat,  Miss  Meyer;  you  are 
wasting  time." 

Hester  guessed  that  Marcia  had  been  begging 
for  her  a  place  near  herself  in  the  dormitory,  at 
table,  and  elsewhere.  Disappointment  at  the  re- 
fusal, and  the  smart  from  Miss  Brown's  sarcastic 
tone,  in  her  rather  sore  condition,  acted  like  a 
searing-iron  on  a  blood-vessel,  and  from  that 
moment  shut  and  sealed  her  emotions  in  great 
measure,  and  made  her  nothing  but  a  machine,  so 
far  as  Miss  Brown  was  concerned.  When  that 
lady  appeared  and  questioned  her  as  to  her  past 
studies,  she  let  her  know  in  bare  monosyllables 
the  dunce  she  was. 

"  I  never  knew  such  ignowance  ! "  Miss  Brown 
said,  half  to  herself.  "The  girl  has  been  shame- 


HESTER   STANLEY  AT   ST.    MARKS.  11 

fully  neglected."  And  at  this  implied  reproach 
upon  her  father,  Hester  blazed  out. 

"  Where  is  Miss  Marks  ? "  she  cried.  "  I  wish 
to  see  the  Principal  of  this  place  !  I  wish  to  know 
if  she  allows  her  scholars  to  be  insulted ! "  —  to 
the  tune  of  a  titter  from  the  girls,  with  whom 
Miss  Brown  was  no  favorite. 

Wrenching  her  arm  from  Miss  Brown's  grasp, 
Hester  darted  across  the  room  towards  the  door 
through  which  she  had  seen  Miss  Marks  disappear, 
and  breaking  in  on  that  lady,  — 

"I  wish  to  ask  you,"  she  exclaimed  breathlessly 
"if  you  allow  your  servants  to  insult  your  scholars 
and  their  parents  ?  It  is  true  that  I  am  ignorant. 
I  should  not  have  come  here  to  learn  if  I  were  not. 
But  my  father  has  never  neglected  me,  and  she  has 
no  right  to  say  so ;  he  is  the  best,  the  dearest  —  " 

And  then  she  was  on  the  floor,  in  a  heap  at  Miss 
Marks's  feet,  crying  again  like  a  tempest.  Miss 
Marks  raised  her  from  the  floor  and  smoothed  her 
hair,  till  the  first  vehemence  of  the  tears  had  sub- 
sided. It  was  not  the  moment  for  severity. 

"  My  dear,"  she  said  then,  when  she  could  be 
heard,  "I  am  not  going  to  correct  you  for  breaking 


12  HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MARKS. 

rules  and  disturbing  the  discipline,  because  I  am 
sure  you  do  not  know  you  are  doing  so ;  but  I 
must  insist  on  your  begging  Miss  Brown's  pardon, 
not  only  for  your  manner  towards  her,  but  for 
styling  her  my  servant  —  " 

"  Why,  she  is  your  servant,  is  n't  she  ? "  asked 
Hester,  looking  up  with  the  tears  glittering  on 
her  dark  skin  and  in  her  dark  eyes.  "You  are 
her  employer,  her  mistress  —  she  obeys  you  ? " 

"So  will  you  obey  me,  I  hope.  Does  that  make 
you  my  servant  ? " 

"  Why,  no,"  said  Hester  slowly.  "  I  suppose," 
she  added,  "  that,  speaking  the  truth,  you  are  my 
servant." 

Miss  Marks  smiled,  notwithstanding  her  per- 
plexity over  this  apparently  new  specimen  among 
children. 

"What  a  little  heathen  it  is!"  she  said  to 
Madame  Cherdidi,  who  was  correcting  exercises 
not  far  away. 

"I  understand  French!"  cried  Hester,  on  her 
feet,  and  confronting  Miss  Marks.  "  I  am  not  a 
heathen.  I  am  a  good  Christian,  and  was  con- 
firmed not  a  month  ago ! " 


HESTER   STANLEY  AT   ST.    MARKS.  13 

"  Do  you  think  you  are  conducting  like  a  Chris- 
tian now  ? "  asked  Miss  Marks. 

Hester  was  silent  a  minute  or  two  ;  and  then  as 
she  looked  up,  she  said  with  deliberation,— 

"  I  am  really  a  greater  dunce  than  I  thought  I 
was.  I  understand  nothing,  it  seems.  I  certainly 
do  not  understand  why,  when  my  father  employs 
you,  and  your  —  your  —  your  Miss  Browns,  to 
teach  me,  that  you  all  act  as  if  you  were  my 
superiors,  and  had  authority  over  me,  —  over  me, 
who  am  the  mistress  of  a  hundred  servants  ! " 

"  That  is  it  exactly  ! "  said  Miss  Marks,  perceiv- 
ing that  the  child  really  meant  no  insolence,  but 
was  puzzled  by  a  state  of  things  which  she  had 
never  seen,  and  of  which  she  had  never  heard. 
"We  are,  your  superiors,  and  we  have  authority 
over  you.  We  should  be  your  superiors  if  it  were 
only  for  the  fact  of  the  vast  difference  between 
our  knowledge  and  your  ignorance;  because,  in 
America,  education  and  knowledge  are  what  con- 
stitute superiority.  But  since  you  have  been  left 
with  me,  I  stand  exactly  in  the  place  of  your 
father.  All  his  authority  over  you  he  has  given  to 
me ;  and  a  part  of  mine  I  delegate,  I  give  to  the 


14  HESTER.  STANLEY   AT   ST.    MARKS. 

other  teachers,  whose  duty  it  is  to  use  it.  There- 
fore," said  Miss  Marks,  "  I  expect  you  to  obey 
them  and  me,  as  you  would  your  father,  and 
by-and-by,  perhaps,  to  love  us  in  some  similar 
degree." 

Hester  stood  with  her  hands  folded,  and  her 
eyes  on  the  floor  awhile.  "  I  don't  suppose,"  she 
said,  "  that  I  shall  ever  love  'anybody  here  very 
much,  unless  it  is  that  girl  with  the  red  hair. 
But  if  it  is  true  that  you  stand  in  the  place  of  my 
father,  I  will  certainly  obey  you." 

"  Very  well,"  said  Miss  Marks,  "  that  is  all  I  ask 
at  present.  Now  —  " 

"  Except,"  added  Hester,  slowly  "  when  you 
may  forbid  me  to  do  right,  or  command  me  to  do 
wrong." 

"  And  who  is  to  be  the  judge  of  that  ? " 

"  I  am,  of  course,"  replied  Hester. 

Miss  Marks  hesitated.  It  did  not  seem  easy  to 
let  this  pass.  "Now  go  and  beg  Miss  Brown's 
pardon  for  your  rudeness,"  she  said  presently,  de- 
ciding that  enough  had  been  said  for  the  time,  and 
willing  to  postpone  the  task  she  saw  before  her. 

She  then  led  the  child  back  to  the  school-room 


HESTER   STANLEY  AT   ST.    MARKS.  15 

door,  to  experience  a  certain  amazed  amusement, 
as  Hester,  standing  before  Miss  Brown,  looked  her 
over  calmly  from  head  to  foot,  and  said,  in  per- 
fect good  faith,  the  whole  school  hearing  her  as 
well, — 

"  I  am  sorry  that  you  obliged  me  to  speak  to 
you  as  I  did,  Miss  Brown.  But  as  Miss  Marks 
says  you  were  only  doing  your  duty,  I  am  willing 
to  overlook  it." 

Miss  Brown  would,  perhaps,  have  been  more 
than  human  if  at  that  she  had  not  taken  Hester 
by  the  shoulder  and  given  her  a  good  shaking. 

"  How  dare  you  touch  me  ?  Take  your  hands 
off  me ! "  roared  Hester.  "  You  are  not  standing 
in  my  father's  place  when  you  do  that !  He  never 
took  such  a  liberty  with  me  ! "  . 

"  What  sort  of  a  little  twopical  tiger  is  this,  Miss 
Marks  ? "  cried  poor  Miss  Brown  in  desperation. 

"  I  am  afraid  I  shall  have  to  take  her  under  my 
own  charge,  Miss  Brown,"  responded  Miss  Marks, 
with  a  tone  of  voice  that  showed  her  disapproval 
of  Miss  Brown's  action,  although  she  might  have 
disliked  to  speak  of  it  before  the  school.  "She 
has  not  yet  learned  our  ways ;  some  day  she  will 


16  HESTER   STANLEY  AT   ST.   MARKS. 

understand  them  better,  and  till  then  we  must 
have  patience." 

"  Do  you  let  such  a  thing  go  without  reproof  ? " 
asked  Hester  of  Miss  Marks.  "The  half-naked 
savage  women  of  the  Islands  do  not  strike  even 
their  captives.  She  must  be  a  very  vulgar  woman 
to  attempt  such  an  indignity.  She  is  a  coward 
too,  for  I  am  not  half  her  size ! "  And  then  Miss 
Marks  hurried  her  away  from  the  scene,  and  took 
her  where  it  was  to  be  hoped  she  dealt  with  her. 

Of  course,  such  unprecedented  behavior  made 
something  of  a  disturbance  in  the  school-room ;  al- 
though, as  before  mentioned,  there  was  a  good  deal 
of  liberty  allowed  the  hour.  But  at  length  the 
inexorable  toll  of  the  quarter  on  the  clock  struck 
more  terror  to  the  hearts  of  the  gigglers  than  all 
of  Miss  Brown's  threats,  and  the  buzz  and  hum  of 
memorizing  alone  broke  the  hush. 

Meanwhile  Miss  Marks,  in  her  sitting-room, 
was  delving  into  the  ignorance  of  Hester,  and 
discovering  that  although  she  played  on  the  guitar 
and  spoke  French  and  worked  lace,  as  the  nuns 
had  taught  her,  with  the  daughters  of  the  half-clad 
Polynesian  princes,  she  could  read  only  with  great 


HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MARKS.  17 

hesitation,  and  knew  nothing  else  from  books,  not 
even  that  the  world  was  round. 

"  It  is  really  lamentable,"  said  Miss  Marks.  "  I 
will  tell  you  frankly,  Hester,  that  if  the  young 
ladies  were  aware  of  it,  it  is  you,  and  not  Miss 
Brown,  at  whom  they  would  be  laughing." 

"  I  ?  Why  should  they  laugh  at  me  ?  Can 
they  talk,  in  French,  in  English,  and  in  Tahitan  ? 
Can  they  do  pillow-lace  and  bobbin  — 

"  They  can  do  things  to  which  all  that  is  play. 
They  can  describe  to  you  the  globe  on  which  you 
live ;  they  know  the  history  of  all  its  people  and 
all  its  rulers,  the  habits  of  its  animals  and  its 
plants.  They  can  call  the  stars  by  name  and  tell 
you  the  laws  by  which  the  Creator  sent  them 
rolling  into  space.  Some  of  them  are  studying 
the  works  of  great  writers  of  books ;  some  of  them 
can  tell  you  the  story  of  the  earth  itself,  before 
men  came  to  live  on  it ;  some  of  them  can  find 
out  with  figures  on  their  slates  when  eclipses 
are  coming  —  " 

"  Oh  Miss  Marks  ! "  cried  Hester,  with  clasped 
hands,  appalled  by  the  array  of  the  young  ladies' 
learning,  which,  it  must  be  confessed,  Miss  Marks 


18  HESTER   STANLEY  AT   ST.    MARKS. 

put  forward  on  its  best  foot.  "  And  I  can  hardly 
read ! " 

"  But  they  were  able  to  do  little  more  when  I 
first  saw  them.  And  you  came  to  learn  these 
very  things.  If  you  obey  the  teachers,  you  cannot 
help  doing  so.  And  I  think  you  will.  Now  I  am 
going  to  do  what  I  have  never  done  before, — 
hear  your  lessons  myself  till  you  have  reached  a 
point  where  you  will  not  be  mortified  before  the 
other  young  ladies." 

All  at  once,  partially  realizing  what  it  was  that 
Miss  Marks  was  doing  for  her,  Hester  seized  both 
the  hands  of  that  lady  and  covered  them  with 
kisses. 

And  although  she  went  to  sleep  crying  that 
night,  with  the  sense  of  her  loneliness  and  her 
ignorance,  she  bent  herself  to  her  books  from  that 
moment,  as  if  she  were  working  to  some  great 
end,  and  won  by  degrees  the  good  will  of  all  in 
authority,  at  any  rate,  except  Miss  Brown,  who 
remained  implacable. 

"Sly,"  said  Miss  Brown.  "And  I  had  wather 
she'd  be  a  gweater  dunce  than  she  is,  than  a 
wogue." 


HESTEE   STANLEY  AT   ST.   MARKS'.  19 


CHAPTER  II. 

FOR  some  time  after  this  Miss  Marks  kept 
Hester  with  herself  the  greater  part  of  the 
day,  and  she  saw  but  little  of  Marcia,  while  her 
teacher  patiently  explained  to  her  all  those  begin- 
nings of  knowledge  whose  absence  might  have 
shamed  her  if  exposed. 

In  those  early  days  when  Hester  was  exploring 
the  fearful  mystery  of  the  reason  for  carrying  ten, 
she  little  thought  of  the  time,  although  her  efforts 
were  directed  towards  nothing  else,  when,  owing 
to  Miss  Marks's  determination,  she  would  carry 
back  to  her  Islands  not  only  a  thorough  education 
in  books,  but  in  all  the  arts  of  the  kitchen,  the 
scissors,  and  the  needle.  But  much  of  that  came 
about  in  the  long  summer  vacations,  when  the 
other  girls  went  to  their  homes,  and  she  was  left 
alone  with  Miss  Marks  and  the  servants. 

In  one  light  Hester  was  not  altogether,  it  might 


20  HESTEK   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MARKS. 

be  said,  a  new  experience  to  Miss  Marks.  In 
her  own  young  days  this  lady  had  dreamed  of 
leading  the  same  life  that  fate  seemed  to  have 
marked  out  for  Hester's  future,  and  had  longed  to 
help  forward  the  race  in  obscure  corners  of  the 
earth ;  but  circumstances  had  led  her  to  sacrifice 
her  wish,  and  she  had  found  as  useful  a  lot  at 
home.  Yet,  owing  to  that  old  dream  of  hers,  she 
felt  a  peculiar  interest  in  Hester,  as  if  she  had 
her  own  youth  and  childhood  back  again  in  her. 

But  even  if  she  had  recalled  no  memories,  the 
little  melancholy  figure,  and  the  longing  face, 
looking  out  on  the  dreary  winter  scene  which 
must  have  seemed  to  her  like  the  death  of  all 
things  pleasant,  could  not  have  done  anything  but 
touch  her  heart. 

Yet  the  winter  was  not  long  on  that  south 
shore  of  New  England,  whose  winds  blow  over  the 
Gulf  Stream,  and  where  there  is  little  snow ;  and 
with  the  coming  of  spring  Hester  began  to  mingle 
more  with  the  girls  and  sljare  some  of  the  public 
recitations. 

That  little  May  Koberts  and  Maud  Smith 
should  be  in  advance  of  her  was  something  she 


HESTER  STANLEY  AT  ST.  MARKS.       21 

could  not  endure ;  and  she  often  timidly  asked 
Marcia  to  hear  one  lesson  before  the  time,  in  order 
to  surprise  Miss  Marks  with  a  double  lesson, 
until  at  last  she  had  passed  those  little  people, 
and  began  to  feel  as  if  she  were  really  on  the  road 
toward  graduation. 

B\it,  with  all  her  industry  and  earnestness,  she 
was  perpetually"  doing  something  that  startled 
those  about  her.  For,  without  any  mother,  sur- 
rounded since  her  birth  by  servants  who  were 
virtually  slaves,  and  left  in  their  hands  a  good  deal 
by  her  father,  who  had  to  be  absent  about  his 
business,  she  was  untamed  and  undisciplined ;  and 
her  tempers  and  impulses  were  always  bursting 
up  like  flames  through  volcanic  soil.  If  she  ever 
should  acquire  a  mastery  over  them,  Miss  Marks 
felt  that  it  would  be  a  greater  victory  than  any  of 
the  other  scholars  —  who  had  been  trained  from 
their  cradles  to  a  certain  degree  of  self-control  — 
could  achieve  ;  and  seeing  that  punishments  arous- 
ing resentment  and  anger  would  not  answer  with 
Hester,  she  took  particular  pains  to  address  her 
reason. 

Meanwhile,  having  outstripped    Maud,  Hester 


22  HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MAKES. 

felt  a  vast  pleasure  in  occasionally  hearing  her 
little  lesson.  She  was  exceedingly  severe  with  her, 
but,  when  the  task  was  done,  she  half  smothered 
her  with  caresses.  She  was  something  to  love 
without  restraint ;  while  Miss  Marks  wore  a  halo 
that  made  love  more  like  worship,  and  Marcia 
was,  after  all,  a  part  of  those  superior  beings  —  the 
girls  of  the  advanced  classes  —  that  one  looked  up 
to  even  if  allowed  to  revolve  around  them  like 
.satellites.  "If  I  had  had  a  little  sister  I  should 
have  loved  her  just  as  I  love  you,"  said  Hester. 

"  I  have  a  sister,"  said  Maud,  "  but  she  is  ever 
so  old,  —  oh,  very  old,  —  as  much  as  twenty-five, 
and  married  !  She  is  sick,  and  that  is  the  reason 
I  am  here.  But  I  think  I  like  to  be  here  best.  I 
think,  I  am  not  sure, — do  you  believe  it  is  wrong? 
—  I  think  I  love  Miss  Marks  the  most.  Some- 
times, when  I  am  half  asleep  and  she  comes  in 
and  stands  by  my  bed  a  moment,  I  think  she  is 
my  guardian  angel  —  " 

"  I  know  she  is  mine  ! "  cried  Hester. 

"And  when  I  look  at  her,  and  she  sings  in 
devotions,  I  think  of  that  in  the  Bible  where  it 
says,  '  I  say  unto  you  that  in  heaven  their  angels 


HESTER  STANLEY  AT  ST.  MARKS.       23 

do  always  behold  the  face  of  my  Father  which  is 
in  heaven,'  or  something  like  that.  What  do  you 
suppose  heaven  is  like,  Hester  ?  What  do  you 
suppose  they  do  there  ?  I  think  of  it  a  great  deal 
nights  when  I  lie  awake.  You  know,"  said  the 
little  thing  timidly,  "  my  mother  is  there." 

"And  your  dear  father,  too,"  said  Hester,  to 
whom  a  father  meant  a  great  deal,  now  that  her 
own  father  was  her  sole  family  possession.  "  Miss 
Marks  says  that  if  we  try  to  make  people  happy 
we  shall  be  growing  fit  for  heaven,  so  I  suppose 
that  is  what  they  do  there." 

"  What  if —  I  mean  —  of  course  you  are  trying, 
Hester,"  said  little  Maud,  with  a  blush  mounting 
her  innocent  forehead,  "but  what  if  we  try 
harder  ? " 

"  I  know.  I  did  n't  mean  to  make  that  mouth 
at  Miss  Brown  to-day.  My  mouth  just  twisted 
round,  she  was  so  —  so  —  and  then  she  shook  me. 
But  I  did  n't  blame  her,  because  I  should  have 
liked  to  shake  her.  You  don't  know  what  hard 
work  it  is  to  be  good,  Maud.  And  it 's  a  shame 
that  anybody  like  Miss  Brown  should  be  here  just 
on  purpose  to  make  folks  have  bad  passions ! " 


24  HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MARKS. 

"Miss  Brown  has  a  good  deal  of  trouble,  I've 
heard  them  say,  and  it  makes  her  nervous,"  said 
little  Maud.  "  My  sister 's  nervous.  And  then, 
she  did  n't  have  Miss  Marks  when  she  was  young. 
We  ought  to  pity  her.  If  she  had  had  Miss 
Marks  — 

"  She  'd  be  gentler.  Perhaps  she  can't  help  it, 
then.  Poor  thing ! "  said  Hester,  in  one  of  her 
sudden  bursts  of  repentance.  "Do  you  suppose 
she  would  like  it  if  we  named  our  rose-tree  for 
her  ? " 

"  I  will  give  her  our  first  forget-me-nots,  too," 
said  Maud.  "I  love  poor  Miss  Brown.  She 
means  to  help  us  —  Oh  !  There  she  is  !  You  don't 
suppose  she  heard  ? " 

Whatever  the  children  supposed,  Miss  Brown 
had  heard ;  and  the  girl  who  disliked  her  most 
of  all,  Charlotte  Risley,  let  us  say,  or  Margaret 
Payson,  —  for  Miss  Brown's  impartial  enmity  bore 
as  severely  on  Margaret's  airs  and  graces  as  on 
Charlotte's  mischief,  —  the  girl  who  most  disliked 
her  would  have  been  sorry  to  see  her  wetting  her 
pillow  with  salt  tears  that  night,  and  perhaps 
glad  to  hear  her  resolution  and  her  prayers  for 


HESTER  STANLEY  AT  ST.  MARKS.       25 

patience  with  the  most  exasperating  set  of  girls 
that  ever  tormented  a  person  designed  to  make 
almanacs  and  obliged  to  shepherd  sheep. 

For  a  little  while  the  poor  teacher  was  more 
subdued  than  the  oldest  inhabitant  could  remem- 
ber having  seen  her ;  and  that,  as  Marcia  said,  was 
certainly  Marcia  herself,  as  she  had  been  at  Water- 
ways since  time  began,  and  was  likely  to  be  there 
till  time  was  done,  before  she  knew  enough  to 
graduate.  It  was  the  next  day  that  Miss  Brown 
gave  Hester  and  Maud  some  flower-seeds,  and 
even  went  out  with  them  one  evening  to  show 
them  how  to  sow  the  seeds  that  they  might  come 
up  with  their  colors  in  the  pattern  of  East  In- 
dian embroidery,  giving  them  a  charming  talk  the 
while  from  her  stores  of  knowledge  —  and  she 
really  had  stores  —  about  the  weaving  and  work- 
ing done  by  those  dark  people  underneath  the  sun, 
whose  eyesight  is  so  delicate  that  they  are  said  to 
see  more  colors  and  combinations  of  colors  than 
we  do,  and  who  are  so  fond  of  their  strong,  sweet 
patchouli  scents  that  all  their  fabrics  shed  them 
on  the  air. 

But   this   frame  of   mind  was   too  tender  and 


26  HESTER   STANLEY  AT   ST.    MARKS. 

unused  to  stand  any  severe  shocks,  and  there 
were  always  miscreants  enough  to  disturb  it.  In 
no  great  while  Hester  herself  was  so  unfortunate 
as  most  unwittingly  to  lay  herself  open  to  Miss 
Brown's  reproaches. 

It  was  during  the  Wednesday  morning  exercise, 
when,  for  an  hour,  —  the  whole  school  being  as- 
sembled,—  general  questions  were  answered  by 
those  of  whom  they  were  asked  indiscriminately, 
whether  in  the  higher  or  lower  classes.  Miss 
Brown  had  drawn  upon  the  blackboard  a  large 
truncated  cone,  and  over  it  had  written  the  words, 
Brown  Bread.  "  Now,"  she  said,  "  I  am  going  to 
cut  this  loaf.  Which  portion  would  you  wather 
have,  —  a  tenth  or  a  hundwedth  ?  Hester,  you 
may  answer." 

And  Hester  quietly  answered,  "  A  hundredth." 
"  Is  it  possible, "  exclaimed  Miss  Brown,  —  "  is 
it  possible  that,  after  all  my  dwilling,  any  one 
can  be  so  ignowant!  Even  little  May  Woberts 
knows  better  than  that.  You  may  stand  in  the 
corner  with  your  back  to  the  school  till  I  call 
you.  May,  you  will  answer  the  question  now. 
Which  portion  of  this  loaf  would  you  pwefer  to 


HESTER   STANLEY  AT   ST.    MARKS.  27 

have,  when  it  is  divided,  one-tenth  or  one-hun- 
dwedth  ?  " 

Forewarned  was  forearmed,  and  of  course  May 
replied  that  she  would  prefer  one-tenth,  and  re- 
ceived a  good  mark  for  her  wisdom ;  after  which 
the  exercise  went  on  according  to  its  own  impar- 
tial fashion,  and  at  its  conclusion  Hester  was  told 
to  turn  round  and  explain  by  what  hidden  process 
of  the  mind  she  came  to  the  decision  that  a  hun- 
dredth was  more  than  a  tenth. 

"  I  don't  think  so,"  said  Hester,  with  her  big 
eyes  all  suffused. 

"  You  don't  ?  I  don't  suppose  you  do,  after  May 
has  taught  you  better.  But,  before  that,  what  was 
the  weason  you  thought  so  ?  Is  it  that  to  gweedy 
eyes  a  hundwed  looks  more  than  ten  ? " 

"  No,  Miss  Brown,"  said  Hester,  trying  hard  to 
keep  cool.  "  I  beg  your  pardon,  but  you  did  n't 
ask  me  which  was  the  greater,  a  tenth  or  a  hun- 
dredth. You  asked  me  which  I  would  rather 
have  of  that  loaf  of  brown  bread,  and  I  said  a 
hundredth;  and  I  would.  For  I  —  I  don't  like 
brown  bread." 

Miss  Brown  was  silent  a  moment  with  indig- 


28  HESTEK   STANLEY  AT   ST.    MAEKS. 

nant  surprise,  and  a  laugh  ran  through  the  whole 
room  like  a  rustle  of  leaves.  "  I  might  have  known 
better,"  said  Miss  Brown,  then,  with  bitter  sever- 
ity, "-  than  to  suppose  I  was  mistaken  in  you  in 
the  first  place.  You  may  spend  the  west  of  the 
morning  in  the  libwawy,  and  you  may  learn  the 
ninth  line  of  the  multiplication  table  before  you 
come  out !  I  never  saw  such  bwazen  insolence  in 
all  my  expewience." 

"  It  is  not  insolence,  Miss  Brown,"  said  Hester. 
"  I  never  meant  —  " 

"Don't  you  contwadict  me!"  returned  Miss 
Brown.  "  I  don't  know  what  you  meant ;  I  know 
what  you  did.  And  I  say  it  was  insolence  —  " 

"  It  was  not,"  said  Hester  firmly.  And  if  the 
monitor's  bell,  calling  new  recitations,  had  not 
sounded,  nobody  knows  where  the  thing  would 
have  ended. 

When,  on  the  next  day,  Miss  Brown  was  sub- 
jected to  a  course  of  Charlotte  Eisley's  peculiarly 
trying  pertness,  the  whole  disturbance  of  her  ner- 
vous circulation  became  something  beyond  endur- 
ance ;  and  happening,  while  in  that  frame,  to  pass 
down  the  garden,  she  saw  that  the  seeds  had  refused 


HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MARKS.  -     29 

to  sprout  in  their  order,  or  give  much  evidence  of 
having  been  planted  at  all.  Vexed  in  soul  at  not 
being  able,  in  addition  to  her  other  annoyances, 
to  bring  her  gardening  to  a  successful  issue,  her 
eyes  fell  on  Hester  occupied  in  exploring  the  earth 
with  her  fingers  in  search  of  the  reluctant  seeds. 
With  her  old  habit  of  suspicion  it  rushed  over 
her  poor  excited  apprehensions  that  Hester  was 
trying  to  thwart  her  intentions  about  that  flower- 
bed which  was  to  look  like  an  India  shawl,  and  in 
the  first  impulse  of  resentment  she  seized  a  garden- 
rake  and  stirred  up  the  bed  in  a  manner  to  settle 
the  question  of  the  seeds  forever.  Angry  with 
herself,  and  twice  angry  with  Hester  for  making 
her  angry  with  herself,  she  lost  no  time  in  restoring 
Hester  to  her  previous  place  in  her  poor  opinion. 

Of  course  both  Maud  and  Hester  shed  tears 
over  the  ruins.  "  I  will  never  name  another  rose- 
tree  for  her ! "  sobbed  Hester.  "I  —  I  hope  this 
one  will  have  thorns  like  needles ! " 

"  I  don't  want  to  hurt  the  rose-tree  because  Miss 
Brown  has  a  naughty  temper,"  sobbed  Maud  in 
return.  "I  suppose  she  can't  help  herself;  she 
did  n't  begin  in  time.  Just  see  how  naughty  her 


30  HESTER   STANLEY  AT   ST.    MARKS. 

being  naughty  makes  us.  I  —  I  —  stamped  my 
foot  at  her ! " 

"/wished  she  was  dead  !" 

"  Oh,  Hester,  Hester,  you  did  n't  know  what  it  is 
to  wish  she  was  dead !  " 

"  It 's  to  wish  her  away  from  here !  " 

"  But  it's  like  killing, — such  a  wish  is,"  gasped 
Maud. 

"  I  know  it.    It 's  her  fault.     She  made  me." 

"  You  put  her  out  by  contradicting  her,"  said 
Maud  courageously. 

"  I  had  to  contradict  her,"  said  Hester  seriously. 
"  And  just  see  how  bad  she  is,  to  make  me  wish 
such  a  horrid  thing !  I  wish  /  was.  But  then 
she  always  says  to  me,  '  What  if  you  should  die 
in  your  sleep  ?  Do  you  think  you  are  fit  to  stand 
before  God?'" 

"  We  are  standing  before  God  now,"  said  Maud, 
the  tears  glittering  still  on  her  eyes  like  dew  on 
great  blue  flowers.  "Miss  Marks  says  so.  He 
sees  us  just  as  much  here  as  he  would  in  heaven. 
But,  oh  Hester,  }-ou  must  promise  me  never  to  do 
anything  you  would  n't  want  to  have  him  see  you 
do  !  For  I  am  going  to  try  —  I  promised  Miss 


HESTER   STANLEY  AT   ST.    MARKS.  31 

Marks  I  would ;  and  oh,  how  dreadful,"  —  with 
fresh  tears,  —  "  it  would  be  —  if  I  should  —  go  to 
heaven  and  not  find  you  there  ! " 

Hester,  too,  burst  into  tears  again  with  the 
misery  of  the  thought.  "  It  won't  be  any  use  try- 
ing,'' she  sobbed.  "She  will  make  me  wicked 
again  to-morrow.  But  of  course  —  of  course  I 
promise  you."  And,  ignorant  of  the  origin  of  the 
action,  they  crossed  their  forefingers,  —  the  little 
brown  one  and  the  little  white  one,  —  to  mark 
the.  compact,  and  kissed  across  them  before  they 
strolled  away  with  their  arms  round  each  other's 
necks.  "  I  am  glad  my  wish  can't  hurt  her,  though," 
said  Hester.  "  But  when  my  father  comes  I  shall 
certainly  tell  him  all  about  her ! "  With  which 
fearful  threat  Hester's  thoughts  reverted  to  the 
flowers  that  were  never  to  bloom.  "  I  wanted  to 
see  our  fraxinella  shine  by  night,"  she  said. 

"  And  the  canary-bird  flowers,"  answered  Maud. 
"  Marcia  said  that  when  they  were  full  blown  they 
would  spread  their  wings  and  fly  away.  I  wanted 
to  see  them  fly ! "  And  Maud  was  not  entirely 
consoled  till  her  sister  sent  for  her  to  come  home 
for  a  few  days  and  celebrate  some  festival  there. 


32  HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MARKS. 

Little  Maud  was  not  very  well  when  she  came 
back,  and  her  condition  made  her  perhaps  more 
than  usually  sympathetic  with  their  ailing  kitten, 
which  Hester  was  nursing  now,  and  with  which 
they  had  great  enjoyment  together.  It  was  not  a 
very  pretty  little  cat,  but  that  was  in  its  favor  so 
far  as  their  tender  compassions  were  concerned. 
Fortified  by  Maud's  affection  for  it,  it  became,  in 
its  illness,  an  object  of  greater  importance  than 
before  to  Hester,  who,  feeling  herself  unable  to 
part  with  it,  took  it  into  class-room  only  to  have 
it  seized  by  Miss  Brown  and  flung  out  the  win- 
dow. White  with  horror,  Hester  was  after  it  in  a 
moment,  —  to  no  avail ;  and  at  the  end  of  a  long 
search,  which  led  them  across  the  garden  and  into 
a  swamp,  out  of  which  they  had  difficulty  in  wad- 
ing, little  Maud  and  she  went  to  bed  with  sore 
throats,  and  Maud  fairly  cried  herself  ill,  if  she 
was  not  already  so. 

Maud  was  worse  next  day,  with  symptoms  that 
caused  the  doctor  to  order  her  to  be  separated 
from  the  rest  of  the  school,  fearing  contagion. 
The  child,  who  had  spent  lately  a  couple  of  nights 
at  her  sister's,  where  they  had  what  afterwards 


HESTER   STANLEY   AT    ST.    MARKS.  33 

proved  to  be  diphtheria,  had  possibly,  he  said, 
caught  it  there. 

Hester,  who  tried  to  follow  her  into  the  distant 
room,  was  turned  back  and  forbidden  to  enter  that 
upper  hall  again.  But  one  might  as  well  have 
forbidden  the  wind  to  blow.  Hester  felt  a  kinship 
with  the  little  fatherless  and  motherless  Maud ; 
and  every  time  she  thought  of  her,  sick  and  on 
her  pillow,  she  would  start  up,  and  if  she  could, 
would  run  for  that  room,  although  only  to  be  in- 
tercepted on  the  way. 

"I  —  I  can't  help  it,"  she  said,  when  one  of  the 
nurses  found  her.  "They're  all  I  have,  and 
they're  both  in  there."  For  Miss  Marks  had 
scarcely  left  the  child  since  she  had  been  taken  ill. 
But,  indignant  with  her  next  and  less  gentle  re- 
pulse, she  stamped  her  foot  and  cried,  "Nobody 
has  a  right  to  forbid  me !  I  did  not  promise  to 
obey  servants  !  Servants  cannot  represent  my 
father !  I  promised  to  obey  when  it  was  right. 
But  Maud  wants  me,  —  I  know  she  wants  me  ;  it 
is  right  I  should  go,  and  I  will !  When  I  say  I 
will  go,  I  will !" 

"  Perhaps  you  will,"  said  Miss  Brown,  taking 


34  HESTER   STANLEY   AT    ST.    MARKS. 

hold  of  her  and  shaking  her  till  her  teeth  chat- 
tered. "  But  it 's  the  law  that  no  young  lady 
mounts  that  staircase,  and  I  don't  think  you 
will." 

But  when,  on  the  second  twilight,  a  rumor  went 
through  the  school — which,  as  the  disease  had  not 
originated  in  the  place,  the  doctor  did  not  think 
it  best  yet  to  scatter  —  that  little  Maud  would  not 
live,  a  wilderness  of  Miss  Browns  could  not  have 
kept  Hester  away. 

She  lay  for  hours  that  night  with  her  eyes 
wide  open  and  her  heart  shaking  her  from  head 
to  foot;  and,  just  as  the  dawn  was  gray,  she  left 
her  bed  and  stole,  barefooted  and  shivering,  from 
alcove  to  alcove,  past  the  sleeping  watch-dog  of 
a  Madame  Cherdidi,  who  alternated  weeks  in  the 
dormitory  with  Miss  Brown,  and  through  the  long 
halls,  and  up  the  distant  nights  of  stairs,  to  the 
door  that  had  been  barred  against  her.  She  softly 
turned  the  handle  and  peered  in. 

It  was  a  chamber  looking  to  the  east,  and  the 
sunrise  was  just  sending  one  long  golden  shaft 
through  the  window.  It  fell  on  Miss  Marks  and 
on  the  bed  beside  which  she  was  standing ;  and 


:  She  softly  turned  the  handle  and  peered  in.     Hester  never  forgot  the  vision  it 
gave  her."  —  PAGE  34. 


HESTER  STANLEY  AT  ST.  MARKS.       35 

Hester  never  forgot  the  vision  it  gave  her,  —  the 
vision  of  that  little  frost-sealed  face,  with  its  soft 
hair  about  it,  like  that  of  some  heavenward- 
floating  cherub,  and  Miss  Marks  standing  there, 
pale  with  her  watching  and  care,  and  with  such  a 
sweet  and  solemn  smile  upon  her  lips,  —  seeming 
to  Hester's  gaze  like  the  great,  white,  carved  angel 
she  had  once  seen  in  a  church  before  she  reached 
Waterways. 

"  I  thought,  oh,  I  thought  she  wanted  me  ! " 
sobbed  Hester.  "  But  I  see  she  could  n't  have 
wanted  me  while  she  had  you !  And  now  she 
wants  nobody  ! " 

Some  time  after  this,  when  things  had  taken 
their  usual  course  again,  when  the  disinfecting 
was  all  done,  and  no  second  case  had  occurred, 
Miss  Marks  made  her  only  reference  to  Hester's 
disobedience  in  mounting  the  stairs. 

She  had  taken  a  number  of  the  girls,  on  a  bril- 
liant starlight  night,  to  point  out  to  them  the 
constellations.  In  the  winter  she  had  shown  them 
that  hunter  of  the  heavens,  Orion,  with  his  sword 
and  belt  and  shield, 

"  Made  tremulously  out  in  hoary  flame," 


36  HESTER    STANLEY    AT    ST.    MARKS. 

and  Sirius,  his  great  bound ;  the  swarm  of  Pleiades 
and  those  stars  that  make  the  face  of  the  bull 
which  Orion  bunts,  the  rainy  Hyacles  that  "  vex 
the  dim  seas."  Now  she  showed  them  Lyra,  like 
a  great  sapphire  in  the  very  key-stone  of  the 
arch  of  night ;  Antares  burning  in  the  heart  of 
the  Scorpion ;  the  Northern  Cross,  as  beautiful 
as  the  Southern  if  not  so  glorious ;  and,  where 
Bootes  chases  the  Bear  with  his  hunting-dogs, 
Arcturus,  not  far  beneath  the  Northern  Crown, 
and  the  lonely  star  of  Charles's  Heart ;  the  calm 
glitter  of  Altair  in  the  Eagle ;  Cassiopeia  on  her 
jewelled  throne-chair  ;  and  a  great,  yellow,  unwink- 
ing planet. 

"  Hester,"  said  Miss  Marks,  walking  back  to  the 
house  alone  with  her,  "  I  suppose  you  would  call 
that  an  exercise  in  astronomy.  What  if  you  called 
it  an  exercise  in  obedience,  —  obedience  to  the 
laws  of  this  school,  which,  perhaps,  you  do  not 
yet  regard  quite  as  you  should  ?  All  those  great 
worlds,  those  stars  that  you  have  seen  moving 
overhead  to-night,  obey  law,  —  the  law  that  sends 
them  on  their  way.  If  every  star  set  up  its  own 
opinion  of  what  it  is  best  to  do,  do  you  think  there 


HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MA11KS.  37 

would  be  anything  but  shooting  stars  to  be  seen  ? 
Our  Lord  himself  is  law  ;  and  law  obeys  itself,  for 
it  never  varies.  Do  you  know  of  any  reason  why 
you  also  should  not  obey  law  ? " 

And  if  Hester  did  not  altogether  understand  the 
words,  at  the  time,  she  did  the  spirit,  and  for  a 
long  while  it  seemed  to  her  as  if,  between  little 
Maud  and  the  stars,  she  had  looked  some  way  into 
heaven. 


38  HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MARKS. 


CHAPTER  III. 

~TF  Miss  Marks  did  not  find  it  expedient  to  make 
-^-  comment  upon  all  the  small  affairs  of  the  school, 
she  did  not  allow  so  important  a  matter  as  the 
health  of  any  of  the  girls  to  escape  her  observation  ; 
and  after  little  Maud's  death  she  thought  it  de- 
cidedly best  that  Hester  should  have  a  change  of 
scene.  The  result,  then,  of  some  whispered  consul- 
tations and  a  brief  correspondence  by  post,  was 
that  Hester  was  sent  with  Marcia  to  pass  a  short 
time  at  the  latter's  home,  and  to  accustom  herself 
there  to  new  ideas  which  might  efface  the  depress- 
ing influence  of  her  last  experience. 

"  Just  think,  Hester,  what  a  good  turn  you  are 
doing  me  !  I  am  going  to  have  the  responsibility 
of  your  care,  —  St.  Marks  says  it  may  develop  my 
character,  and  Brownie  says  there's  no  need  of 
hurrying  that,  —  and  we  are  going  to  see  mamma 
and  Rafe,  my  darling  Rafe  !  What  do  you  think 
of  that  ? " 


HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MARKS.  39 

But  Hester  had  hardly  time  to  think,  let  alone 
to  say  what  she  thought,  before  she  found  herself 
on  her  way ;  and  it  was  but  a  few  hours  before  she 
was  looking  about  her  as  she  stood  in  the  outskirts 
of  a  large  town,  and  on  the  doorstep  of  an  old- 
fashioned  country-house,  the  red  roofs  gleaming 
among  lofty  elms  full  of  building  birds  and  late 
afternoon  sunbeams,  and  the  greensward  at  her 
feet  strewn  with  hoops  and  bats  and  balls  and 
grace-sticks  and  dolls. 

The  next  moment  there  was  a  rush  and  scamper, 
and  half  a  dozen  —  or  was  it  a  dozen  ?  —  little 
Meyers  of  every  size  and  description  were  run- 
ning through  the  hall,  and  all  but  rising  out  of  the 
ground,  to  throw  their  arms  about  Marcia's  neck 
with  exclamations  of  joy. 

"  Oh  Marcia  dear,  I  'm  so  glad  you  've  come  !  I 
want  you  so  to  hurry  right  away  and  mend  —  " 

"  Oh  Marcia,  father  's  bought  a  new  hay-field, 
and  there  are  meadow-larks'  nests  in  it.  You'll 
go  look  for  them  with  me,  won't  you  ?  " 

"Oh  Marcia,  this  is  my  new  Dinah,  and  you  will 
make  a  gown  for  her  —  " 

"  Oh  Marcia  darling,  are  you  going  to  stay  ?  It 's 
been  so  lonesome  without  you  !  " 


40  HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MARKS. 

And  then,  suddenly,  they  saw  the  little  stranger, 
and  put  their  thumbs  into  their  mouths  and  re- 
treated, while  Marcia  cried,  "  Yes,  yes,  yes,  to  all 
of  you  !  And  this  is  Hester,  and  she  will  help  us 
so !  And,  Hester,  this  is  Rosy,  and  Helen,  and 
John,  and  Bert,  and  Agnes,  and  Mabel.  And  now 
for  mamma ;  and  where  is  Rafe  ?  " 

"  Oh  Marcia !  Did  n't  you  know  about  the  new 
baby  ? " 

"  A  new  baby  !  Well,  I  should  think  somebody 
might  have  written  ! " 

"  Why,  we  could  n't.  And  new  babies  always 
do  seem  to  come  at  such  inconvenient  times, 
when  mamma  is  sick.  But  it 's  seven  weeks  old 
now,  Marcia,  and  it 's  got  a  dimple  — 

"  And  oh  Marcia,  what  do  you  think  ?  Mamma 
had  all  her  teeth  out  yesterday,  and  is  going  to 
have  some  new  ones  — 

"  There,  that 's  enough  !  Come  along,  Hester ! " 
And,  running  up-stairs  and  the  length  of  the  hall, 
Marcia  tapped  at  a  door  and  opened  it,  and  Hester 
was  pushed  by  her  into  a  large,  pleasant  room,  full 
of  rose-colored  chintz  and  confusion,  where  a  lady 
sat  in  a  reclining  chair,  her  face  tied  up  in  a  white 


HESTELt   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MARKS.  41 

handkerchief,  and  just  at  hand  an  atom  of  a  baby 
in  a  basket,  up  the  side  of  which  a  little  two-year- 
old  was  climbing  and  jealously  peering,  while  on  a 
lounge  under  the  window  lay  a  lad  of  some  twelve 
summers,  who  looked  at  her  with  eyes  that  seemed 
to  Hester  shining  from  a  perfectly  seraphic  face. 
She  had  no  time  to  observe  farther,  for  Marcia  was 
calling  out,  "  This  is  mamma,  Hester,  —  my  dear, 
poor,  sweet  mamma !  You  kiss  her  on  that  side 
and  I  '11  kiss  her  on  this !  And  is  this  the  new 
baby  ?  Oh,  is  n't  it  a  dear  ?  I  love  it  already, 
don't  you  ?  And,  Hester,  look,  look,  it 's  really 
smiling !  Oh,  Eafe,  Rafy,  my  dear  boy,  to  think 
you  're  there  still !  My  dear,  dear  boy  ! "  And 
Marcia  was  half  smothering  the  lad  in  kisses, 
while  Hester  was  still  kneeling  by  the  little  rose- 
lined  basket,  and  adoring  with  a  forgetful  worship 
the  first  white  baby  she  had  ever  seen. 

"There,  there,  Marcia,  that  will  do,"  said  the 
lady  with  the  muffled  mouth.  "  It  is  so  good  that 
you  could  come,  my  child.  Perhaps  now  you  will 
help  me  reduce  this  part  of  the  world  to  order." 

To  reduce  her  part  of  the  world  to  order  was  poor 
Mrs  Meyer's  perpetual  aspiration  ;  and  the  fact  of 


42  HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MARKS. 

its  being  perpetual  showed  how  vain  it  was.  Her 
horde  of  children  were  always  falling  down,  break- 
ing arms,  cutting  fingers,  tearing  clothes,  scuffing 
out  shoes,  getting  lost,  filling  their  faces  with  pow- 
der, cluttering  the  rooms,  upsetting  the  furniture, 
and  turning  things  topsy-turvy  in  general ;  their 
playthings  were  in  the  china-closet,  on  the  library 
shelves,  under  the  cradle-pillows,  on  the  lawn ; 
they  themselves  were  under  everybody's  heels. 
There  was  only  one  comfortable  hour  in  the  house 
where  they  were,  and  that  was  after  they  were  all 
in  bed ;  nor  was  that  altogether  comfortable,  for 
Mabel  was  tumbling  out  of  bed,  and  John  was 
walking  in  his  sleep,  and  it  was  haunted  by  re- 
morseful visions  of  work  in  patches  and  darns  and 
running  up  rips,  with  which  the  tired-out  mother 
found  it  impossible  to  keep  up. 

"  Oh,  we  '11  help  you  famously,  little  mother," 
said  Marcia.  "  To  begin  with,  you  see,  Hester  will 
take  the  baby  off  your  hands  entirely.  But  where 's 
Miss  Persis?" 

"  Her  mother  was  ill,  and  she  went  home.  Poor 
Miss  Persis  !  I  suppose  even  that  is  rest  to  her," 
said  Mrs.  Meyer  with  a  sigh.  "  But  she  will  be 


HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MARKS.  43 

back  by  and  by.     I  have  n't  bad  an  hour's  peace 

since  she  went,  though." 

"  Poor,  dear  mamma  !     And  it  was  such  a  nice 

time  for  you  to  have  your  teeth  out." 

"  The  dentist  came  along,  and  I  thought  I  might 

as  well  get  it  over  while  your  father  was  away. 
There,  Marcia,  there  !  I  've  been  expecting  it ! 
Oh,  what  is  it  ?  What  is  it  ?  Georgie  ?  Oh, 
Georgie  has  killed  himself !  "  And  then  there  was 
a  general  swarming  of  the  little  Meyers  into  the 
room,  to  exhibit  Georgie's  mashed  finger,  and  be- 
fore the  rout  was  quieted  the  tea-bell  rang. 

"  Oh,  here 's  the  cat,  Hester,"  cried  Marcia,  as 
she  nearly  tumbled  over  that  member  of  the 
family  on  the  stairs.  "  My  beautiful,  big,  black 
Beauty  !  She 's  in  mourning  for  her  last  children, 
you  see,  —  three  of  them.  They  died  of  wetting 
their  feet.  It's  an  awfully  dangerous  complaint," 
said  Marcia  soberly,  as  the  black  Beauty  fawned 
about  her  in  recognition.  "  She  has  twenty  chil- 
dren in  the  river  now ;  just  think  of  it.  People 
praise  the  beauty  of  this  river,  but  to  her  it 's  only 
one  vast  cemetery." 

"  You  would  n't  be  making  so  much  of  her,"  said 


44  HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MARKS. 

John,  as  he  stopped  a  moment  in  sliding  down 
the  banisters,  "if  she  woke  you  up  every  night 
walking  on  the  roof." 

"  It 's  where  you  want  to  walk  yourself,  John," 
said  Helen,  "  but  father  says  you  shan't." 

"  Father 's  not  here  now,"  said  John. 

"  Mamma  is." 

"  Oh,  mamma  ! " 

"  Well,  we  shall  tell  father  if  you  do.  He  said 
.you  were  never  to  open  that  scuttle-door.  He 
said  you  would  break  your  neck  —  " 

"And  he  said  you  were  to  leave  off  sliding 
down  the  banisters  ! "  said  Kosy. 

"  Do  you  see  this  ? "  said  John.  And  he  took 
from  his  pocket  a  rubber  ball  that  had  long  been 
lost.  "  Where  do  you  suppose  I  found  it  ?  On 
the  roof!  And  I  got  out  through  that  scuttle- 
door  !  And  if  you  tell  father,  you  shan't  play 
with  it !  "  And  then  he  finished  sliding  down  the 
banisters. 

"Well,  Hester,"  said  Marcia,  after  she  had 
upbraided  John,  and  then  gone  back  to  help  her 
mother  down,  "  this  is  n't  like  the  refectory  at  St. 
Marks's  ;  but  then  it  lias  its  advantages.  It 's  as 


HESTER  STANLEY  AT  ST.  MARKS.       45 

good  as  a  menagerie,  —  the  little  Meyers  at  table  ! 
]STow,  Rosy,  if  you  want  me  to  show  you  about 
that  example,  butter  your  bread  in  your  plate,  not 
in  the  air.  Pretty  figure  you  '11  cut  at  St.  Marks's 
when  your  turn  comes,  —  with  your  spoon  upside- 
down  in  your  mouth !  What  makes  you  use  a 
spoon  at  all  ?  Why  don't  you  do  the  way  Agnes 
does,  and  put  your  fingers  in  the  salt-cellar  ?  It 
looks  as  if  she  were  cooking." 

"Dear  me,  Marcia,  if  you  Ve  only  come  home  to 
find  fault  and  tell  tales  — 

"  We  shall  wish  you  had  stayed  at  school,"  said 
the  girls. 

"  So  shall  I,"  said  Marcia.  "  I  'm  quite  used  to 
nice  manners  at  school,  and  it  is  horrid  to  hear 
anybody  make  such  a  noise,  eating  bread  and  milk, 
as  Bert  does.  Hester  came  from  the  South  Sea 
Islands,  where  they  are  all  savages,  but  I  guess 
she  never  saw  any  of  them  hitting  each  other 
under  the  table  the  way  John  is  hitting  Helen." 

"Oh,  Marcia  ! "  said  Hester  timidly. 

"I  guess  she  would,"  said  John  stoutly.  "I 
guess  she  'd  hit  back  herself  if  they  pinched  her 
first  because  she  happened  to  get  the  biggest  piece 
of  gingerbread." 


46  HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MARKS. 

"  Helen,  if  you  pinched  John,"  said  Mrs.  Meyer, 
"you  may  go  up-stairs  to  bed  without  your  supper, 
directly." 

Helen,  for  reply,  helped  herself  to  another  piece 
of  gingerbread. 

"  Directly  ! "  repeated  her  mother. 

Helen  pushed  back  her  chair,  but  took  another 
drink  of  milk,  and  what  she  would  have  done,  if 
her  mother  had  not  pushed  back  her  own  chair, 
nobody  knows ;  but  at  that  sound  she  went,  slam- 
ming the  door  behind  her. 

"Dear  me,"  said  Marcia,  "I  should  think  we 
might  have  had  peace  just  this  one  time.  Such  a 
muss ! " 

"What  would  you  think  if  you  had  it  all  the 
time  ? "  asked  Eosy  with  dignity. 

"I  should  try  to  prevent  it,  Eosy  Posy,  and 
instead —  What  are  you  jumping  up  for  now? 
That's  the  third  time  since  we  sat  down.  Can't 
Bridget  set  the  table  properly  ?  There,  I  thought 
you  would,"  as  the  glass  dish  slipped  from  Eosy's 
fingers  and  splintered  itself  everywhere.  "Now 
Agnes's  supper  is  spoiled,  for  she  's  always  looking 
for  glass  in  her  food,  unless  she 's  reformed  — 


HESTER    STANLEY    AT    ST.    MARKS.  47 

"  It  kills  you,  you  know,"  said  Agnes,  looking 
up. 

"  Not  if  it  is  n't  there,"  said  Eosy  with  scorn. 

Meanwhile  Mrs.  Meyer  was  trying  to  pacify 
little  Tot,  who  was  roaring  for  honey,  while  the 
maid  was  preparing  Eafe's  tea  to  be  taken  up 
on  a  tray ;  and  in  the  midst  of  it  came  a  general 
uprising  from  Bert's  upsetting  his  bowl  of  milk 
over  the  table,  and  nothing  but  Mrs.  Meyer's  fran- 
tic clutch  at  the  damask  saved  cloth  and  china 
and  all  from  the  floor.  "  I  am  so  glad  your  father 
is  n't  here,"  moaned  Mrs.  Meyer. 

"He'd  only  have  laughed  if  he  was,"  said 
Bert. 

"  It 's  very  true,"  said  the  half-distracted  mother. 
"  If  he  exerted  any  authority  —  " 

"  He  would  n't  be  father,  then,"  said  Marcia. 
"Let  me  carry  up  Eafe's  tray,  mamma.  Now, 
children,  you  take  care  of  Hester  while  I  'm  gone." 

In  obedience  to  this  injunction,  it  may  have 
been,  although  it  would  have  been  the  first  ex- 
ercise in  obedience  in  his  life,  John  surveyed 
Hester  seriously  a  moment  or  two,  with  the  tip 
of  his  fork  in  his  mouth.  "  Do  folks  eat  folks 


48  HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MARKS. 

where  you  come  from,  Hester  ? "  asked  John 
then. 

"  Why,  no  indeed ! "  said  Hester  with  an  indig- 
nant flush. 

"  John !  Go  from  the  table  this  instant !  "  said 
his  mother. 

"  Wait  till  I  finish  this,"  said  John,  with  his 
mouth  full. 

"  Not  a  minute.     Go  at  once ! " 

"  But  just  this  little  bit,"  persisted  John. 

"  Do  you  hear  me,  John  ?  Are  you  going  to 
disobey  me  ? " 

"  Why,  of  course  not,"  said  John,  "  if  you  only 
wait  till  —  " 

"  Leave  the  table  at  once,  sir ! "  she  said,  half 
rising. 

"Till  I  get  through.  There.  What's  the  use 
of  hurrying  a  fellow  ?  "  And  John  wiped  his 
mouth  and  folded  his  napkin  leisurely,  and  all  the 
others  laughed,  and  Mrs.  Meyer  with  them. 

By  this  time  came  an  episode  with  Agnes,  who 
wanted  more  of  the  tart  than  her  mother  thought 
best,  and  who  burst  into  tears  at  the  refusal,  and 
was  threatened  with  being  shut  up  in  a  closet. 


HESTER  STANLEY  AT  ST.  MARKS.       49 

"  You  know  you  could  n't  do  it,  mamsey,"  said 
John,  who  had  not  left  the  room,  but  was  now 
climbing  on  the  back  of  his  mother's  chair,  with 
his  arms  round  her  neck.  "  You  're  not  strong 
enough.  If  it  came  to  a  tussle,  Agnes  would  have 
the  best  of  it,  I  guess.  You  put  Agnes  into  a 
closet,  marnsey,  you,  —  living  on  spoon  victuals  ! " 
And  then  John  was  rubbing  his  little  impudent 
cheek  on  his  mother's  pretty,  soft  hair,  with  a 
caress  that  rather  contradicted  the  force  of  his 
naughty  words  and  ways,  and  Agnes  was  securing 
her  piece  of  tart. 

"  It  seems  as  if  I  never  should  command  any 
respect  from  my  children,"  said  Mrs.  Meyer  mourn- 
fully. 

"  It 's  just  as  well  to  have  us  love  you,  instead, 
mamsey,"  said  John,  still  standing  tiptoe  on  the 
rungs  of  the  chair-back.  "  You  would  n't  like  us 
all  stepping  stiff  in  a  row  and  frightened  to  death 
if  you  wink  at  us." 

"I    never   do   wink   at  you.      Bert!      Let  the 

bread-knife  alone  !     You  will  cut  yourself  again  !  " 

And  suddenly  Mrs.  Meyer  rose  to  lean  forward  and 

seize  the  knife,  which,  of  course,  Bert  didn't  let 

4 


50  HESTER   STANLEY   AT    ST.    MARKS. 

alone,  and  back  went  her  chair  with  John  on  it, 
and  crack  went  John's  head  against  the  wall,  and 
a  roar  and  an  uproar  followed  that  made  Hester's 
heart  stand  still. 

"Well,"  said  Marcia,  reappearing  in  the  door 
as  the  confusion  subsided  a  little, "  are  the  animals 
fed  ? " 

"  Are  n't  you  ashamed  of  yourself,  Marcia !  " 
said  her  mother,  still  rubbing  John's  head  with  a 
bit  of  ice  from  her  glass. 

"  Ice  in  her  hand,  and  her  mouth  in  that  con- 
dition ! "  said  Marcia. 

"  I  don't  want  her  to  !  "  cried  John.  "  It  hurts, 
anyway.  And  I  only  let  her  do  it  to  please  her  ! " 

"  They  act  as  if  their  mother  was  a  baby  for 
them  to  play  with,"  thought  Hester.  "  Dear  me  ! 
And  talk  of  heathen  !  " 

"  Well,  then,"  said  Marcia,  "  let 's  all  go  up- 
stairs and  see  the  sunset  from  Rafe's  window,  and 
Hester  will  tell  you  about  the  other  side  of  the 
world  where  she  lives."  And  while  they  were 
sitting  there  Mrs.  Meyer  crept  up  with  a  plate  of 
good  things  to  the  supperless  Helen,  and  came 
down  to  find  peace  reigning  round  Rafe's  lounge, 


HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MARKS.  51 

through  the  gentle  art  with  which  he  drew  one 
and    another   of  that  group,   full   of   noise    and 
•vitality,  into  a  quiet  enjoyment  of  what  he  had 
to  say  to  them. 

"  You  see,"  said  Marcia  to  Hester  when  they 
were  undressing  that  night,  "the  children  are 
rather  tender  to  Rafe,  because  nobody  knows  who 
did  it." 

"  Who  did  it  ? " 

"  Hurt  him  so." 

"  Oh,  Marcia,  you  don't  think  —  " 

"Yes,  I  do.  We  all  did  it.  You  see  he  has 
what  is  called  lumbar  abscess.  He  had  a  dreadful 
pain,  and  the  doctor  had  to  operate,  and  then  they 
found  he  had  a  curve  in  the  spine;  and  to  keep 
him  from  being  a  hunchback  he  has  to  lie  with 
his  head  low,  and  his  body  in  a  plaster  case.  And 
it  all  came  from  our  pulling  a  chair  out  from 
under  him,  and.  his  falling  on  the  floor  so  that  he 
struck  the  back  just  there.  Why,  Hester,  you 
little  goose,  I  would  n't  have  told  you  if  I  'd 
known  you  were  going  to  cry  !  He  '11  get  over  it 
and  come  out  all  right.  And  he  says  himself  he 
is  glad  it  happened ;  for  it 's  been  a  good  discipline, 


52  HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MARKS. 

and  he  thinks  in  time  it  will  help  all  the  rest. 
Dear  Kafe  !  He 's  more  fit  for  heaven  now  than 
for  the  Meyer  family  !  " 

Hester  sat  a  great  deal  by  Kafe's  lounge  after 
that,  having  begged  permission  to  hold  the  new 
baby  on  her  knee  there.  She  told  him  the  inci- 
dents of  her  brief  experience,  and  all  about  her 
dear  little  Maud  ;  which  was  a  real  comfort  to  her. 
And  he  talked  to  her,  as  he  did  not  often  to  the 
others,  of  his  sorrows  and  his  hopes,  and  of  what 
he  meant  to  do  when  he  was  well.  He  had  quite 
decided  to  be  a  doctor,  and  he  thought  he  should 
know  a  good  deal  to  begin  with  about  hectic  fevers 
and  spinal  troubles.  "  You  see,"  he  said,  "  there  is 
nothing  better  than  healing.  Christ  had  nothing 
better  to  do  when  he  came  on  earth.  And  all  the 
prophets  have  been  healers,  too,  you  know,  Hester. 
There  was  Elisha" — and,  as  if  the  birds  of  the  air 
told  what  he  was  about,  half  the  swarm  of  chil- 
dren were  on  hand  before  the  story  of  Elisha  had 
reached  the  point  where  the  prophet,  encompassed 
by  the  hosts  of  Syria  with  chariots  and  horses,  told 
his  frightened  servant-boy  to  fear  not,  for  "  they 
that  be  with  us  are  more  than  they  that  be  with 


HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MARKS.  53 

them."  And  then  Rafe  repeated  in  his  childish  way 
the  story  of  the  Lord's  opening  the  lad's  eyes : 
"  And,  behold,  the  mountain  was  full  of  horses  and 
chariots  of  fire  round  about  Elisha."  "  Can't  you 
see  it  all  ?  "  said  Eafe.  "  Legions  of  angels,  the 
cohorts  of  the  Lord,  their  great  wings  arched  over 
their  heads,  the  light  of  heaven  upon  the  tips  of 
them,  and  upon  the  heads  of  the  plunging  horses 
that  they  held,  too,  —  horses  like  Job's,  you  know, 
—  their  necks  clothed  with  thunder,  and  the  glory 
of  their  nostrils  terrible  !  " 

It  was  just  at  this  point,  one  afternoon,  that 
little  Mabel  —  I  think  it  was  Mabel,  one  is  apt  to 
lose  one's  self  in  the  multitude  of  the  Meyers  — 
came  in  rubbing  her  hands.  "  Run  out  and  see  me 
fiyeh,"  she  said.  "  Me  has  builded  bufle  fiyeh." 
And,  with  an  intuition  that  something  might  be 
wrong,  Marcia  called  Hester,  and  of  course  the 
rest  followed,  to  find  that  the  little  mischief  had 
piled  against  the  house  all  the  dried  leaves  and 
twigs  that  she  could  find,  and  had  laboriously 
kindled  them  to  a  blaze,  which  the  wind  was  doing 
its  best  to  fan  against  a  light  lattice.  Of  course, 
with  all  the  help  she  had,  Marcia  had  no  difficulty 


54       HESTER  STANLEY  AT  ST.  MARKS. 

in  scattering  the  little  bonfire  ;  and  then  Mabel  had 
to  be  instructed  in  the  nature  of  fire,  and  the 
danger  of  their  all  burning  in  their  beds  if  she 
repeated  her  play, —  a  danger  which  so  appalled 
her  that  she  broke  into  a  solid  roar  and  had  to  be 
carried  to  her  mother  for  comfort. 

Her  mother  was  lying  down,  and  Mabel  nestled 
beside  her  a  moment,  then  sat  up  for  fresh  breath, 
and,  overcome  with  the  picture  painted  of  the  pos- 
sibilities of  the  burning,  threw  herself  back  on  the 
pillow  with  a  new  cry.  She  meant  to  throw  herself 
back  on  the  pillow,  that  is;  but  it  was  a  very 
different  thing  that  the  back  of  her  head  struck. 
It  was  her  mother's  nose.  There  was  a  report 
like  a  pistol ;  and  the  children  ran  in  amazement 
to  see  their  mother's  nose  all  on  one  side  of  her 
poor  face,  the  bone  indented  by  the  blow. 

"  Oh,  we  shall  kill  her,  among  us  ! "  cried  Mar- 
cia.  "What  a  pack  of  little  wretches  we  are! 
That 's  just  the  way  John  broke  out  her  front 
teeth,  kicking  and  throwing  himself  about  when 
she  was  trying  to  get  hold  of  his  nose  to  pour 
castor-oil  down  his  throat ! "  Then  she  was  out 
of  the  house,  running  for  the  doctor  with  all  her 


HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MAKES.  55 

might.  He  came  directly,  bringing  Marcia  with 
him  in  his  chaise,  and  with  a  probe  he  snapped 
the  bone  back  into  place,  and  no  harm  done,  peace 
being  restored  thereby  to  the  Meyer  family  for  a 
brief  period. 

But  only  for  a  brief  period  :  then  Agnes  was 
found  behind  the  sofa  with  the  shears,  cutting  off 
every  one  of  Mabel's  luxuriant  curls,  because  they 
were  getting  too  red  and  she  was  getting  too  vain! 
Mrs.  Meyer  really  shed  tears  as  she  walked  about 
picking  up  the  great  golden  tresses,  shining  with 
a  splendid  thread  of  fire  every  here  and  there ;  and 
she  had  a  pain  come  in  the  place  of  every  one  of 
her  absent  teeth,  and  had  to  go  to  bed  with  head 
and  face  wrapped  in  hot  flannels,  while  Marcia 
vainly  endeavored  to  keep  the  house  still. 

"  I  'm  sure  I  'm  glad  father  is  away,"  said  Mar- 
cia. "  I  don't  know  what  he  'd  have  said  to  you, 
Agnes.  You  know  how  much  he  thinks  of  Mabel's 
curls ! " 

"He  thinks  too  much  of  them,"  said  Agnes 
loftily. 

"  I  '11  tell  you  what  I  think  of  you"  said  Marcia 
hotly.  "  You  ought  to  have  a  good  whipping ! " 


56  HESTER   STANLEY  AT   ST.    MARKS. 

"  Well,  I  shan't  get  it,"  said  Agues. 

"  Come  here,  children,"  said  Eafe.  "  Sit  down 
now  round  ray  lounge,  and  I  will  read  you  about 
the  Celestial  City  in  '  Pilgrim's  Progress.' " 

"  What  is  that  ? "  asked  Mabel. 

"  Heaven,"  said  Marcia,  taking  Tot  on  her  knee, 
while  Hester  indulged  herself  in  perfect  bliss  with 
the  baby  on  her  lap,  —  "  heaven,  where  we  are  all 
going  by  and  by." 

"  All  of  us  ? "  said  Mabel,  from  the  hassock. 

"  I  hope  so ;  unless  we  cut  off  other  people's 
curls  any  more." 

"  And  all  together  ? "  —  making  a  great  effort  to 
speak  plainly,  because  Tot  could  n't :  she  would 
not  have  said  "  ortogezzer  "  for  a  cooky. 

"  Oh,  no,  indeed  !  unless  the  roof  should  fall  in 
or  we  were  burned  in  our  beds.  It  is  n't  a  picnic. 
One  by  one,  of  course,  as  folks  die  —  " 

A  wail  from  Tot  stayed  her.  "  Dear,  dear ! 
what  is  it  now  ? "  said  Marcia  ;  "  what  is  it,  Tot  ? 
There,  there,  there  !  —  " 

"  I  done  yant  to  go,"  cried  Tot. 

"  Don't  want  to  go  where  ? " 

"  To  heben.    Oh,  pease,  I  done  yant  to  go ! "  and 


HESTER   STANLEY  AT   ST.    MARKS.  57 

the  little  lip  curled,  and  the  tears  swelled  again. 
"  I  like  here  !  " 

"  Well,  well,"  said  Marcia,  "  we  '11  stay  here, 
then ;  as  long  as  we  can,  that  is." 

"  /  'm  going,"  said  John,  with  assurance. 

"  See  that  you  do,"  said  Kafe.  "  And  now  hear 
this." 

Poor  little  John !  he  came  very  near  going, 
and  that  very  night.  Hester,  usually  a  light 
sleeper,  woke  in  the  middle  of  the  night  with 
something  walking  across  her  face.  She  thought 
it  was  a  spider,  and  brushed  it  off.  Presently 
it  came  again.  Then  she  sat  up  in  bed,  putting 
out  her  hand  gropingly,  and  caught  a  string, — 
a  string  that  she  shortly  saw  the  wind  from 
the  open  casement  had  blown  across  her  face, 
dangling,  as  it  was,  from  the  edge  of  the  roof 
overhead,  with  a  fishhook  on  the  end  of  it.  It 
was  so  very  queer  that  Hester  sprang  to  the  win- 
dow, put  out  her  head,  and  looked  up. 

There  was  an  infinite  depth  of  violet  darkness 
overhead,  at  first ;  and  then  a  powder  of  stars ; 
and  directly  afterward  Hester  saw  something  else 
that  gave  her  a  worse  start  than  the  spider  had 


58  HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MARKS. 

given  her :  it  was  John's  face,  in  which  the  eyes 
were  fixed  with  a  strange  stare,  bending  over  the 
eaves  above  her,  and'  John's  two  hands  pulling 
with  all  speed  on  the  string,  at  which,  when  she 
had  caught  it,  he  thought  a  fish  had  bitten,  as  he 
lay  flat  on  the  roof,  whither  he  had  walked  in  his 
sleep,  under  the  impression  that  he  was  playing 
truant  from  school  and  had  gone  fishing. 

Hester  had  never  heard  of  such  a  thing  as  walk- 
ing in  one's  sleep,  and  knew  nothing  of  the  danger 
of  waking  such  a  person,  nor  of  the  fact  that  John 
could  not  see  her.  She  could  not  imagine  what 
pleasure  he  was  taking ;  but  she  was  far  too  shy 
to  speak  to  him,  and  she  softly  drew  in  her  head, 
and  would  presently  have  been  asleep  had  not  her 
movement  startled  Marcia,  in  reply  to  whose  ques- 
tions she  told,  with  some  hesitation,  what  John 
was  about. 

"  He  '11  go  in  wading,  next  thing,"  said  Marcia, 
"  and  just  step  off  the  roof  then  and  break  every 
bone  in  his  body.  Oh,  what  shall  we  do  !  I  hate 
to  wake  mamma :  John  will  certainly  be  killed ! 
Why  does  n't  father-  stay  at  home,  instead  of  going 
off  hunting  in  Maine  !"  And  talking  to  herself  all 


HESTER  STANLEY  AT  ST.  MARKS.       59 

the  way  with  vehemence.  Mama  ran  and  waked 
the  hired  man,  and  sent  him  creeping  cautiously 
along  the  roof,  with  the  double  clothes-line  round 
his  body,  till  he  could  grab  John  by  the  waist  and 
bring  him  up,  and  then  down  to  safety. 

"  And  I  hope  the  start  you  had,"  said  Marcia  to 
him  the  next  day,  "  will  c\ire  such  a  horrid  habit. 
If  you  had  minded  what  father  said,  and  never 
gone  up  that  attic  ladder  and  opened  that  scuttle 
in  the  first  place,  when  you  were  awake,  you 
would  never  have  known  how  to  go  there  when 
you  were  asleep !  Let  my  cat  alone,  John !  I 
won't  have  her  run  round  so  by  the  tail.  She 's 
in  mourning,  don't  you  see  ?  You  've  done  her 
harm  enough  already.  And  you  know  father  told 
you  not  to  drown  any  more  kittens ! " 

"  Somebody  must,"  said  John. 

"  Well,  you  let  all  my  kittens  alone.  If  there 's 
a  hundred,  I  want  to  see  them  when  I  corne 
home." 

"  If  I  don't  mind  father,  I  guess  I  shan't  mind 
you ! " 

"You're  getting  to  be  a  terrible  boy,  John 
Meyer,  and  an  awful  example  to  Bert.  You  don't 


60  HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MARKS. 

mind  anybody.  It 's  a  comfort  to  think  there  's 
something  you  have  to  mind.  You  have  to  mind 
law  :  if  you  break  your  arm,  you  have  to  suffer ; 
if  you  scratch  the  skin  off,  you  have  to  smart." 

"  And  I  should  think  you  were  glad  of  it !  I  'm 
as  good  as  Joe  Jones,  anyway  !" 

"  What  do  you  know  about  Joe  Jones  ? " 

"  You  don't  suppose  Charlotte  Eisley  lives  over 
the  way,"  said  Rosy,  "  without  our  hearing  some- 
thing of  what  goes  on  at  Waterways  ? " 

"And  1 11  just  let  you  know,  Marcia  Meyer," 
resumed  John,  "  that  I  —  " 

"  That  you  're  my  dear  old  John,"  said  Marcia, 
with  a  laugh,  "  if  you  do  drown  my  kittens  and  go 
fishing  in  your  sleep  to  get  them  back ; "  and  then 
John  laughed,  too. 

"  I  won't  touch  your  old  cat,"  he  said. 

"  You  have  a  real  faculty,  Marcia,"  sighed  her 
mother.  "  You  do  better  with  them  than  I  do. 
You  seem  so  much  older." 

"  That 's  because  I  've  been  at  St.  Marks,  and 
learned  how  not  to  do  what  Miss  Brown  does." 

"  Poor  Miss  Brown,"  said  her  mother,  "  you 
know  she  has  narrow  means,  and  she  is  naturally 


HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MARKS.  Gl 

fidgety ;  and  she  gets  worn  out  with  work  ;  and 
then,  besides,  she  is  all  the  time  anxious  and  worried 
about  her  sick  people  at  home.  I  know  just  how 
it  is,"  said  Mrs.  Meyer. 

"  Well,  even  Miss  Brown  can't  spoil  the  work 
at  Waterways.  But  I  hope  I  shall  get  through  in 
season  to  have  a  go  at  the  baby.  I  mean  to  make 
her  my  one  especial  object  in  life." 

"  And  then  perhaps  your  mother  '11  name  her 
for  you,  Marcia,"  said  Hester,  and  could  not  in  the 
least  understand  the  unanimous  roar  that  followed. 

"  Marcia,"  said  Hester,  at  the  end  of  her  exciting 
visit, — when  she  had,  with  some  reluctance,  bidden 
good-by  to  Rafe  and  his  dreams,  to  all  the  other 
children  and  their  racket,  and  with  ineffable  love 
and  longing  had  held  the  little  downy  peach  of  a 
baby  in  her  arms  for  a  last' half  hour,  — "I  think 
one  of  the  reasons  that  Miss  Marks  sent  me  here 
was  that  I  might  see  what  disobedience  does." 

"  You  do,  do  you  ?  I  don't  suppose  you  know 
that  you  are  mighty  frank.  But  I  guess  you're 
right.  St.  Marks  makes  a  business  of  finding  out 
all  about  all  of  us,  and  she  knows  as  well  as  I  do 
the  ins  and  outs  of  the  Meyers." 


62  HESTER   STANLEY   AT. ST.   MARKS. 

"  And,  Marcia,  do  you  know,"  continued  Hester, 
feeling  sure  that  Marcia  agreed  with  her,  and  took 
no  offence  over  a  statement  of  palpable  fact,  "I 
think  we  both  of  us  have  some  of  the  same  work 
to  do,  —  missionary  work  to  do.  For,  if  I  am 
going  home  to  civilize  my  heathen  —  " 

"  I  am  going  home,  too,  you  mean,"  cried  Marcia 
gayly,  "  to  civilize  my  little  savages  !  Well,  they 
are  dear  little  savages,  every  one  ! " 


HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MARKS. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

nriHE  heart  of  Marcia  Meyer,  herself  no  more 
-*-  favored  than  Hester  was  by  Miss  Brown, 
who  used  to  call  her  "  that  tall,  wough,  wude  Miss 
Meyer,"  had  been  moved  in  the  beginning  by  the 
little  desolate  stranger.  Now  that  Hester  had 
been  put  in  her  care  for  a  season  by  Miss  Marks, 
and  had  been  at  her  home,  she  felt  as  if  she  had 
become  in  some  measure  a  member  of  the  Meyer 
family  ;  and  on  their  return  to  school  she  showed 
herself,  so  far  as  there  was  any  occasion  for  it, 
Hester's  ardent  adherent,  and  was  quite  ready  to 
fight  her  battles  if  she  had  any. 

In  return,  Hester,  not  only"  drawn  nearer  to 
Marcia  now  that  Maud  was  gone,  but  feeling, 
through  her  acquaintance  with  her  mother  and 
the  little  savages,  as  if  they  were  really  related, 
did  for  her  the  only  things  she  knew  how,  and 


64  HESTER   STANLEY   AT    ST.    MARKS. 

secretly  —  so  that  Marcia  might  some  day  arnaze 
the  girls  with  her  accomplishment  —  taught  her 
to  play  a  fandango  on  her  guitar,  and  an  accom- 
paniment to  a  song  that  sounded  very  well  in  the 
deep  contralto  tones  of  Marcia's  voice. 

One  day,  moreover,  crying  over  the  dreadful 
operation  of  parsing  "  Peter's  cap,"  puzzling  why 
one  word  should  be  in  the  possessive  case,  or  why 
one  word  should  govern,  or  be  governed  by, 
another,  and  what  it  all  meant  anyway,  Marcia 
had  found  her,  and  taking  the  book,  had  made  the 
whole  thing  clear  as  looking  through  crystal,  and 
by  some  secret  spring  had  suddenly  opened  her 
eyes  to  all  the  wide  firmament  of  grammar. 

Then  Hester,  cudgelling  her  brain  for  something 
further  with  which  she  might  please  Marcia,  en- 
ticed her,  in  the  twilight  of  the  recreation  hour, 
down  to  the  water's  edge  at  the  foot  of  the  garden, 
evening  after  evening,  and  floated  her  in  the  water 
with  herself  till  slfe  had  fairly  taught  her  how  to 
swim,  and  to  swim  more  than  tolerably  well.  For 
Marcia  was  afraid  of  nothing :  and  as  soon  as  she 
saw  Hester  diving  under  water  like  a  duck,  she 
was  determined  she  would  do  the  same  thing. 


HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.   MARKS.  65 

And  so  they  stole  up  out  of  the  water  one  even- 
ing, in  their  long  dripping  night-dresses,  like  two 
little  mermaids,  only  to  be  pounced  upon  by  Miss 
Brown,  who  dragged  them  before  Miss  Marks, 
where  they  stood  in  pools  of  water  soaking  from 
their  one  garment,  their  hair,  their  elbows,  their 
noses,  and  their  ten  fingers. 

"  I  thought  mischief  was  bwewing,  Miss  Marks, 
with  these  childwen's  heads  together  evewy  spare 
hour.  And  now,  you  see,  half  the  young  ladies 
will  be  dwowned  by  her  before  term  closes  ! " 

"  Put  them  to  bed  directly,  Miss  Brown,  before 
they  catch  their  death,"  said  Miss  Marks.  "  They 
already  have  been  too  long  in  their  wet  things, 
and  we  will  talk  of  this  to-morrow." 

In  the  morning,  after  prayers,  and  before  the 
classes  separated,  Miss  Marks  summoned  Hester 
to  her  desk,  and  said,  "  Should  you  like  to  take  a 
class  in  swimming,  Hester  ? " 

Hester  in  a  moment  understood  the  good  lady's 
intention  to  instruct  her  that  she  need  not  do  in 
secret  that  which  it  was  not  wrong  in  itself  to 
do,  and  also  to  let  her  show  the  girls  that  she,  too, 
had  some  knowledge  worth  imparting,  and  assented 
gladly. 


66  HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MARKS. 

"  And  you  feel  perfectly  competent  ? " 

"Oh,  yes,  indeed,  Miss  Marks!"  she  exclaimed. 
"  There  is  nothing  I  can't  do  in  the  water !  I  can 
live  in  it.  And  I  can  teach  them  to  swim,  to 
float,  to  dive,  to  sew  in  it,  to  read  a  book  in  it,  to 
live  in  it  too  !  I  could  —  I  could  —  teach  —  " 

"  Teach  me  ? "  said  Miss  Marks  looking  down 
into  the  wistful  eyes.  "  \\rell,  you  shall,  at  some 
time.  Young  ladies,"  said  Miss  Marks,  then 
addressing  the  school,  "  how  many  of  you  would 
like  to  learn  to  swim  ? " 

Every  hand  in  the  room  rose  in  an  instant,  and 
in  some  cases  two  of  them,  like  a  rosy  swarm  of 
little  flames. 

"  Well,  I  never ! "  murmured  Miss  Brown  in- 
audibly.  "Wewarding  her  for  it,  as  sure  as  my 
name  is  Bwown ! " 

"  Not  so  fast,"  said  Miss  Marks.  "  I  think  the 
teacher  of  natation  can  receive  only  a  half-dozen 
in  her  class  at  first ;  and,  although  in  future  I  will 
make  entrance  to  the  class  a  reward  of  merit,  the 
members  of  the  first  class  may  be  chosen  by  the 
teacher  herself." 

"You   know   I   have   an   assistant,"  whispered 


HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MARKS.  67 

Hester  a  little  archly.  "Marcia  swims  pretty 
well." 

"Then,  with  Marcia  to  share  your  labors,  we 
will  designate  ten." 

"  I  should  n't  like  to  choose,"  murmured  Hester, 
"  any  but  you  and  Miss  Brown." 

"Miss  Bwown,  indeed!"  murmured  that  indi- 
vidual with  a  toss,  seeing  Hester's  chance  of  re- 
venging herself  for  numerous  wrongs  by  catching 
her  hair,  or  holding  her  nose  under  water.  "  Not 
while  she  wemains  in  her  senses  ! " 

"  Let  me  choose  them,  Miss  Marks ! "  cried  Marcia, 
in  reply  to  Miss  Marks's  bow  at  her  uplifted  hand. 

"  I  don't  know  about  that,  Marcia,"  answered 
Miss  Marks.  "  I  think  you  knew  it  was  doubtful 
whether  you  were  doing  right  or  not ;  but  Hester, 
who  has  always  been  accustomed  to  the  water, 
because  in  the  South  Sea  Islands  people  are 
almost  as  much  in  water  as  on  land,  —  Hester 
had  no  idea  of  disapproval.  I  will  name  them 
myself.  Bella  Brook  — 

"  I  '11  just  hold  her  head  down  till  she  begs  for 
mercy  for  not  prompting  me  yesterday,"  whispered 
Marcia. 


68  HESTER    STANLEY  AT   ST.    MARKS. 

"  Fanny  Doane,  Sally  Martin,  Margaret  Payson, 
Hilda  —  I  feel  very  much  encouraged  by  your 
nods  of  approval,  Miss  Meyer!"  And  then  as 
Marcia  blushed  and  laughed,  and,  whispering 
something  very  rapidly,  hid  her  face  behind  her 
desk  cover,  she  went  on  and  named  the  rest. 

And  that  sunset  the  first  lesson  was  given,  — 
the  whole  school  being  allowed  to  go  down  to  the 
foot  of  the  garden  and  witness  some  preparatory 
exercises  in  the  shape  of  an  exhibition  of  Hester's 
powers  in  the  water.  She  dived  from  the  top  of 
the  great  rock,  scooted  under  the  surface  and  came 
up  at  a  distance,  walked  in  it,  lay  on  her  back 
on  it  and  made  believe  read  a  letter  which  she 
couldn't  read  out  of  it,  and  finally,  putting  one 
arm  round  Marcia's  neck,  went  floating  away  with 
her  as  if  they  had  been  a  pair  of  sea-nymphs, 
while  the  whole  school  were  enthusiastic  over  the 
performance.  It  occurred  to  Miss  Marks  that  she 
needed  no  better  system  of  rewards  and  punish- 
ments than  the  swimming-school  would  afford 
her. 

"And  when  they  have  learned  to  swim,  Miss 
Marks,"  cried  Hester,  "  I  can  teach  them  how  to 


HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MARKS.  69 

row  ! "  And  then  with  ineffable  pride  she  began 
her  instructions  to  each  girl  of  her  class  by  herself. 
"  I  am  a  little  savage,"  she  said  gayly  to  Marcia, 
"  but  then,  you  see,  savages  have  their  uses." 

"  I  weally  should  like  to  see  the  use  of  this," 
murmured  Miss  Brown  to  herself  from  her  post 
of  observation.  "  Pwetty  work  it  will  be  if  Mr. 
Marquand's  boys  find  it  out  and  come  swimming 
over !  I  would  weally  be  willing  to  wager  that 
that  little  wogue  deliberwately  planned  the  thing, 
the  minx ! " 

But  Miss  Brown  was  not  entirely  correct.  It 
was  not  Hester,  but  Marcia,  who  had  ever  thought 
of  such  a  possibility.  As  for  Hester,  she  did  not 
even  know  that  there  was  such  a  person  as  Mr. 
Marquand,  still  less,  that  he  was  a  clergyman  at 
the  head  of  a  school  for  boys  just  across  the  bay. 

It  would  not  have  entered  her  wildest  dreams 
to  imagine  such  a  thing  as  the  young  gentlemen 
swimming  across  the  little  bay  in  their  bathing- 
suits,  for  the  sake  of  seeing  Bella  Brook,  Marcia 
Meyer,  and  that  demure  little  puss,  Charlotte 
Eisley.  "Miss  Wisley,"  said  Miss  Brown  once 
with  much  truth,  "  wequires  untiwing  watchful- 


70  HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MARKS. 

ness."  And  when  Miss  Brown  saw  Miss  Pasley 
and  Miss  Brook  making  their  stout  ticking  swim- 
ming-suits uncommonly  coquettish,  all  the  detec- 
tive in  her  rose;  she  determined  to  have  an 
eye  on  them,  and  she  thought  it  would  go  hard 
if,  between  herself  and  Mr.  Marquand's  tutors, 
any  such  gayeties  could  be  successful.  It  cer- 
tainly would  not  be  Mr.  Marquand's  fault,  she 
knew;  for  never  were  boys  more  jealously  guarded 
from  the  wiles  of  a  female  seminary  than  his, 
what  with  himself,  his  tutors,  and  his  dogs. 

Yet  something  told  Miss  Brown  that  what 
boys  wanted  to  do  they  would,  if  they  had  to 
slide  down  the  lightning-rod  to  do  it. 


HESTER  STANLEY  AT  ST.  MAEKS.       71 


CHAPTER  V. 

/~\!N"CE  in  every  half  year  Mr.  Marquand  gave 
\S  his  young  gentlemen  a  party  to  which  all 
of  Miss  Marks's  young  ladies  were  invited,  and 
once  in  every  half  year  Miss  Marks  returned  the 
compliment. 

But  the  gathering  at  Miss  Marks's  was  usually 
one  for  which  some  little  exhibition  was  arranged, 
—  such  as  a  charade,  or  a  French  play,  —  and  to 
which  the  trustees  and  townspeople  were  invited ; 
the  latter,  however,  only  on  the  payment  of  a  small 
fee  to  be  devoted  to  charitable  uses.  One  of  these 
exhibitions  was  now  in  preparation ;  and  the  im- 
portance of  the  young  ladies  chosen  for  performers, 
and  called  upon  at  all  odd  times  for  rehearsal,  was 
only  equalled  by  their  happiness. 

Cinderella  was  the  play  to  be  given  as  the 
chief 'feature  of  the  evening.  The  properties  of  the 


72  HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MARKS. 

play  were  easily  procured,  —  an  old-fashioned  crib, 
with  its  high  bamboo  frame  for  netting,  answering 
for  a  coach,  when  covered  with  gilt  paper,  the 
gardener  and  his  sons  being  allowed  to  take  the 
part  of  coachman  arid  footmen,  and  the  horses  be- 
ing supposed  to  be  just  outside  the  door,  through 
which  a  long  bunch  of  hair  representing  a  horse's 
tail  was  whisked  on  occasion,  and  where  a  great 
stamping  was  kept  up.  The  attic  of  every  ac- 
quaintance, of  course,  was  ransacked  for  finery  for 
the  court  ladies. 

Nearly  at  the  last  moment,  and  but  a  day  or 
two  before  the  fateful  night,  little  May  Roberts 
sprained  her  ankle,  and  her  part  of  the  Fairy  God- 
mother bade  fair  to  be  a  lame  performance. 

"What  are  we  'going  to  do,  Miss  Marks?" 
exclaimed  Marcia,  who,  in  a  long  talma  and  top- 
boots,  was  to  enact  the  Fairy  Prince. 

"  I  really  don't  know,"  said  Miss  Marks  after  a 
little  thought,  "unless  Hester  can  take  it.  She 
is  small  enough,  and  has  shown  some  power  of 
memorizing.  You  —  you  may  speak  to  her  about 
it." 

"Oh,  how  I  should  like  it!"  replied  Hester, 


HESTEll   STANLEY  AT   ST.   MARKS.  73 

who,  to  tell  the  truth,  had  rather  envied  the 
string  of  tall  girls  that  she  had  seen  called  from 
the  study-room,  at  times,  to  practise  their  parts. 
"  But  —  don't  laugh  at  me,  Marcia —  I  don't  know 
what  Cinderella  is  ! " 

"  You  poor  child !  And  have  you  lived  to  this 
without  fairy  stories  ?  Did  you  never  hear  of 
'  Jack  the  Giant-Killer,'  nor  the  '  Sleeping  Beauty,' 
nor  '  Kumpelstitzkin,'  nor  the  '  Fairy  '  —  " 

"  Tell  me  truly,  Marcia,"  whispered  Hester, 
"  what  is  a  fairy  ? " 

"  You  don't  tell  me  you  don't  know  ? "  cried 
Murcia,  appalled  at  Hester's  ignorance.  "Oh, 
shan't  we  have  a  nice  time  telling  you ! "  And 
she  forthwith  proceeded  to  recite  to  her  the  thrill- 
ing story  of  Cinderella,  word  for  word,  as  if  it  were 
true. 

"  We  will  have  a  fairy  story  now  every  night 
in  our  dormitory,  when  Brownie's  off-week  comes, 
till  there  are  none  left.  I'll  coax  poor  old 
Cherdidi  with  candy.  —  she'll  do  a  great  deal 
for  bonbons,"  said  the  naughty  Marcia,  as  she 
concluded. 

"  Oh  Marcia,"  cried  Hester,  never  dreaming  of 


74  HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MARKS. 

doubting  her.  "  You  are  my  fairy  godmother. 
Yes,  indeed,  I  will  learn  the  part  if  I  have  to 
study  all  night!" 

"  They  won't  let  you  do  that ;  but  now  you  can 
come  with  us  and  read  it  as  we  act." 

And  suddenly,  with  a  new  world  opening  be- 
fore her,  —  the  world  of  fairy-land,  —  Hester 
slowly  read  over  all  she  had  to  say;  and  then, 
going  with  Marcia  to  Miss  Marks,  acted  out  the 
part  so  well,  entering  into  it  with  such  spirit,  and 
imagining  herself  the  old  fairy  with  such  reality, 
although  still  reading  from  the  page  she  held,  that 
the  girls  forgot  their  own  parts  in  wondering  at 
her. 

"I  declare,"  cried  Bella  Brook,  as  they  talked 
it  over  after  Miss  Marks  and  Hester  had  gone,  "  I 
felt  as  if  my  brown  gown  were  really  going  to 
turn  into  pink  satin  when  she  flew  around  and 
touched  me  with  her  wand,  her  black  eyes  shining 
so  !  It 's  great  luck  May  Roberts  is  sick.  Hester 
will  make  it  spin  as  if  it  were  alive  ! " 

"  And  to  think,"  said  Marcia,  "  that  she.  never 
heard  of  fairies,  and  that  now  she  believes  all  you 
tell  her  !  See  her  out  there  in  the  garden  now ;  I 


IIESTEK  STANLEY  AT  ST.  MARKS.  75 

declare  she 's  looking  in  the  lilies  for  them  !  Oh, 
what  times  we  are  going  to  have  with  her!  Is 
your  dress  all  right,  Bella  ?  Charlotte  will  make 
a  splendid  court  lady,  won't  she  ?  But  dou't  you 
think  Margaret  Payson  ought  to  seem  more  spite- 
ful than  she  does,  for  the  other  wicked  step-sister  ? 
She  's  spiteful  enough  in  ordinary  life,  I  'm  sure." 
"Lucky  Miss  Marks  does  n't  hear  you,  March  ! " 
What  a  night  it  was  for  Hester,  that  next  one  ! 
In  her  little  red-heeled  slippers  and  pointed  cap, 
with  the  cloak  stuffed  out  behind  like  a  hump, 
and  with  the  heavy  cane,  she  stepped  from  the 
opening  wall  to  the  sighing  Cinderella,  transformed 
the  crying,  dingy  object  by  a  touch  of  her  wand  to 
the  jewelled  and  dazzling  creature,  turned  pump- 
kin and  rats  and  mice  to  gilded  coach  and  gold- 
laced  driver  and  postilions,  all  as  if  she  really 
believed  in  herself,  and  were  actually  performing 
the  wonders  she  pretended  to  do. 

It  was  nothing  to  her  that  there  was  an  au- 
dience of  the  townspeople  and  trustees  present; 
although,  of  course,  there  was  encouragement  in 
all  the  upturned  and  admiring  faces.  And  as  for 
Mr.  Marquand's  boys,  at  that  period  of  her  life 


76  HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.   MARKS. 

she  cared  much  less  for  a  boy  than  she  did  for  a 
girl.  She  was  simply  carried  away  by  the  delight 
of  fancying  herself  possessed  of  supernatural 
powers,  and  was  playing  only  to  herself  and 
Marcia,  with  a  faint  idea  of  Miss  Marks  and  the 
universe  somewhere  on  the  edge  of  space. 

"  Did  you  ever  know  anything  like  it  ? "  cried 
Bella  Brook  to  Miss  Eisley,  as  scene  after  scene 
passed  off  and  all  the  repeated  applause  was  not 
for  them  but  for  Hester.  "Is  n't  it  capital  in  her  ? 
But  we  're  all  out  of  sight." 

"  I  suppose  it 's  because  she 's  so  little,"  said 
Charlotte.  "  Paul  Munster  was  clapping  you." 

"As  if  I  cared  what  Paul  Munster  was  doing  ! " 

"  Well,  you  do ;  you  know  you  do.  There 's 
your  cue."  And  then  Cinderella  danced  on  the 
stage  again. 

"  I  do  declare ! "  exclaimed  Margaret  Payson, 
by-and-by,  as  she  came  off  in  her  turn.  "  Did  you 
ever  know  anything  so  mean  ?  Here  we  are  doing 
our  very  best,  and  everybody  used  to  applaud  us 
so,  and  now  nobody  seems  to  see  a  soul  but  this 
little  wretch,  who  does  n't  have  much  to  say,  any- 
way. She  acts  just  as  if  she  thought  she  really 
was  a  fairy ! " 


HESTER  STANLEY  AT  ST.  MARKS.       77 

"Do  you  know,"  said  Fanny  Doane,  joining 
them,  "  she  never  heard  of  such  a  thing  till  day 
before  yesterday,  and  she 's  perfectly  wild  about 
it,  Marcia  says." 

"  Strange !  I  thought  they  had  all  sorts  of 
superstitions  down  there  where  she  came  from," 
said  Charlotte,  "  if  she  has  n't  herself." 

"  So  they  do ;  and  I  suppose  she 's  just  like  the 
rest,  —  lived  in  the  water  all  her  life ;  learned 
French  talking  with  the  French  missionaries; 
ready  to  believe  anything.  But  they  don't  have 
fairies  down  there ;  they  have  little  gods  for 
everything,  Miss  Marks  says,  —  Tuesday's  god  and 
Friday's  god,  —  but  nothing  like  our  exquisite 
fancies  of  the  fairy  elves." 

"That  sounds  just  like  Miss  Marks!  There 
comes  Hester  now.  See  her  hobbling  on  her 
cane,  and  shaking  her  head,  —  a  little  old  dwarf- 
woman.  I  should  like  to  know  the  sense  of  her 
hobbling  across  the  back  of  the  stage  in  every 
scene  without  saying  a  word." 

"  Miss  Marks  says  it 's  to  keep  up  the  remem- 
brance of  the  fairy  element,"  said  Charlotte. 

"Miss  Marks  is  too  'high-falutin'  for  anything," 


78  HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MARKS. 

Fanny  Doane  declared.  "Now  hear  them  ap- 
plauding her  !  Should  n't  you  think  she  'd  really 
done  something?" 

"I'll  do  something!  I  declare  I  will!"  cried 
Margaret.  "  It 's  the  last  scene,  coming  now,  — 
yes,  it  is,  I  know,  because  I  just  ran  out  to  make 
ready  for  the  officers  who  are  coming  with  the 
prince  to  try  on  the  slipper.  See,  are  my  plumes 
all  right  ?  I  Ve  all  the  false  hair  in  school  on  top 
of  my  head,  I  do  believe." 

"Yes,  this  is  her  transformation  scene,"  said 
Charlotte,  "  when  she  throws  off  cloak  and  hump 
and  pointed  cap." 

"  And  stands  out  in  her  gauzy  skirts  and  rose- 
colored  wings,  with  the  star  on  her  forehead  and 
another  on  her  wand,"  said  Fanny. 

"  Humph  —  humph  ! "  said  Margaret  softly,  and 
half  to  herself,  "I  guess  there  won't  be  quite  so 
much  applause  just  then.  There's  my  word! 
Hurry  up,  Charlotte ;  you  steal  in  just  behind  me, 
all  in  a  heap,  you  know.  '  The  prince,  mamma  ? 
the  prince  ?  and  with  the  glass  slipper  ?  Oh,  I 
know  it  will  exactly  fit  my  foot ! '  "  saying  which 
words  she  was  again  upon  the  stage. 


HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MARKS.  79 

It  was  really  a  pretty  scene,  that  last  one,  con- 
sidering the  limited  resources  of  the  school,  —  the 
haughty  step-mother  and  her  daughters,  the  prince, 
with  all  the  gold-laced  court  behind  him,  the  gray 
rags  falling  off  Cinderella,  while  she  sat  in  the 
centre  putting  on  the  slipper,  and  disclosing  a 
white  splendor  of  spangled  laces,  as  the  fairy 
godmother,  suddenly  appearing  upon  the  scene, 
touched  her  with  the  tip  of  the  old  cane. 

In  another  instant,  springing  up  some  steps 
concealed  behind  the  group,  in  order  to  seem 
above  them  all,  the  godmother,  just  in  the  act  of 
throwing  off  her  cloak  and  pointed  cap,  and  re- 
vealing her  fairy  garb,  was  tripped  by  an  artful 
foot,  and  with  a  suppressed  scream,  and  a  moment 
of  struggling  and  swinging,  fell  headlong  into  the 
midst  of  the  cluster,  carrying  down  one  or  two 
with  her. 

It  was  only  a  moment  before  she  was  on  her 
feet  again.  Her  nose  was  bleeding,  but  her  eyes 
were  blazing.  She  made  a  rush  for  Margaret 
Payson,  before  any  one  could  hinder,  tore  down 
the  lofty  structure  of  her  false  hair,  till  the 
stage  was  strewn  with  switches,  snatched  away 


80  HESTEK   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MARKS. 

her  plumes,  her  veil,  her  great  ruff,  her  beads,  her 
ribbons ;  and  goodness  only  knows  what  she  would 
not  have  done  if,  at  that  moment,  the  curtain  had 
not  begun  to  drop,  and  Miss  Brown  had  not  run 
upon  the  scene,  among  all  the  bewildered  and 
frightened  players,  and,  snatching  Hester  in  her 
arms,  carried  her,  kicking  and  screaming,  out  of 
sight. 

"  Oh  you  dweadful  little  fuwy ! "  cried  Miss 
Brown,  flinging  Hester  into  a  dark  room.  "  Stay 
there ! " 

And  there,  still  kicking  and  screaming,  Hester 
stayed ;  for  Miss  Brown  had  shut  and  locked  the 
door  behind  her. 

In  the  hall  all  was  surprise  and  confusion. 
Every  one  was  asking  how  the  accident  happened  ; 
some  were  regretting  it,  and  others  treating  it 
with  ridicule.  The  friends  of  Hester,  who  had 
been  made  proud  by  her  triumphs,  were  chagrined, 
and  sought  some  ground  of  excuse  for  her  con- 
duct. It  did,  indeed,  seem  a  matter  for  regret 
that  so  great  happiness  and  well-earned  success 
should  be  eclipsed  in  such  a  sudden  and  mortify- 
ing manner. 


HESTER   STANLEY  AT   ST.   MARKS.  81 


CHAPTER   VI. 

"  "T"Y7~HAT  have  you  done  with  Hester,  Miss 
^  *        Brown  ?  "  asked  Miss  Marks,  hurrying 
to  meet  her  assistant  as  soon  as  she  could  leave 
those  by  whom  she  had  been  detained. 

"She's  all  wight  till  to-morwow,"  said  Miss 
Brown. 

"  "Was  ever  anything  so  unfortunate  ?  I  have 
always  had  my  misgivings  about  these  plays,  and 
now  I  see  plainly  that  it  is  wrong  and  unwise  to 
have  them  here.  What  passions  they  excite  !  This 
is  the  very  last." 

"  My  dear  Miss  Marks  !  Depwive  the  young 
ladies  of  so  gweat  a  pleasure  and  the  poor  of  all 
the  money  it  bwings,  because  this  little  wetched 
thing,  this  little  cannibal  —  I  verwily  believe  she  'd 
have  bitten  Margwet  in  a  moment  — 

"  Oh,  don't  speak  of  it,  Miss  Brown  !  It  fairly 
makes  me  ill.  To  think  of  that  child  —  What 
had  Margaret  done  ? " 

6 


82  HESTEK   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MARKS. 

"  Nothing ! "  said  Miss  Brown.  "  A  mere  noth- 
ing, so  far  as  I  could  see.  But  weally,  Miss  Marks, 
I  think  there  are  too  many  needing  us  now,  to  dis- 
cuss it." 

"  That  is  true,"  said  Miss  Marks ;  and  so  they 


But  there  were  two  young  shadows  in  the 
mean  time  standing  in  the  deeper  shadow. 

"  Will  you  just  tell  me,  March,  what  makes 
such  a  gentle  saint  as  Miss  Marks  keep  that 
Brownie  ? "  whispered  one  of  them. 

"For  two  reasons,  Bella.  One  is,  that  there 
isn't  another  such  teacher  of  mathematics  to  be 
had  for  money.  And  the  other  is  because  Brownie 
has  a  mother  and  two  sick  sisters  to  support,  and 
Miss  Marks  knows  nobody  else  would  put  up  with 
her.  Now  you  just  creep  through  the  long  win- 
dow. I  'm  going  to  see  what  she 's  done  with 
Hester  first.  '  Nothing,'  indeed  !  Did  n't  you  see 
Margaret's  toe  send  her  flying  ?  " 

"  Oh,  Hester  11  keep.  Miss  Brown  can't  be 
doing  anything  to  her  now,  and  I  want  you  to 
come  down  in  the  garden  with  me.  If  Paul  sees 
that  cloak  over  your  shoulder,  and  that  soft  hat, 


HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MASKS.  83 

he  '11  think  somebody 's  strolling  with  me,  and  be 
so  furious  !  It  will  be  great  fun." 

"Well,  one  moment;  but  only  one,  remember." 
And  Cinderella  and  the  Fairy  Prince  stole  down 
into  the  dark  flower-scented  paths  of  the  garden 
half  in  moonlight,  arm  in  arm,  like  two  lovers  in 
some  romance,  —  the  long  cloak  that  hid  the  skirt, 
and  the  darkness  of  the  paths,  disguising  the  fact 
that  not  only  one,  but  both,  of  the  lovers  were 
girls. 

Meantime  Hester  slipped  from  the  leather  sofa 
in  the  recitation-room,  where  Miss  Brown  had 
thrust  her,  to  the  floor ;  and  she  lay  there  sobbing 
and  talking  fast  to  herself,  beating  the  floor  with 
her  feet,  stopping  to  wring  her  hands  and  tear  her 
hair,  and  then  again  screaming  and  rolling  in  the 
dust,  till,  all  at  once,  nature  being  entirely  ex- 
hausted, she  fell  sound  asleep. 

Hester  did  not  sleep  more  than  half  an  hour, 
however,  before  she  awoke  with  a  groan,  and  began 
to  look  about  her.  She  tried  to  remember  where 
she  was,  and  why  it  was  so  dark,  and  why  she  felt 
so  terrible  a  weight  on  her.  And  then  everything 
rushed  back,  and  with  a  cry  of  despair  she  sat 
upright  in  the  black  room. 


84  HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.   MARKS. 

"  Oh,  Miss  Marks  will  never  forgive  me  ! "  she 
exclaimed.  "  And  I  love  her  so  !  And  Marcia  — 
will  —  despise  me  —  and  Bella  —  "  And  a  flood  of 
tears  again  relieved  her  for  a  moment. 

Through  her  tears,  at  last,  chancing  to  look  up, 
Hester  saw  something  glimmering.  It  was  the 
summer  night  outside  the  window.  For,  although 
the  room  was  dark,  the  moon  shone  on  a  part  of 
the  garden  which  it  overlooked. 

She  rose,  and  groping  her  way,  climbed  to  the 
window-seat  and  looked  out.  She  was  perfectly 
wretched ;  she  wished  she  could  die ;  she  thought 
if  she  did  die,  there  was  nobody  to  care.  She  had 
not  heard  from  her  father  since  the  first  fortnight 
of  her  stay  at  school,  when  he  wrote  from  San 
Francisco,  just  before  setting  sail.  He  might,  even 
now,  be  rolling  in  his  grave  beneath  the  waves  ! 
And,  overcome  with  the  misery  of  the  thought, 
again  she  wept.  And  what  would  he  think  of  her 
if  he  had  seen  her !  Oh,  how  she  had  disgraced 
him  !  And  her  promise  to  Maud  —  alas  !  alas  !  her 
promise  to  Maud  !  And  if  Kafe  should  know  ! 

When  her  tears  allowed  her  to  see  anything 
again,  Hester  observed  the  lights  in  the  wing. 


HESTER   STANLEY  AT   ST.    MARKS.  85 

They  were  dancing  contra-dances  in  the  great 
school-room  that  had  been  cleared  of  its  desks  for 
the  purpose.  How  she  had  expected  to  go  "  down 
outside  and  up  the  middle,"  as  if  her  rosy  wings 
were  carrying  her !  The  music  of  piano  and  violin 
and  horn  came  to  her  like  a  mockery.  What  were 
music  and  gayety  for  in  a  world  where  everything 
was  so  hollow ! 

Figures  were  moving,  too,  in  the  garden  below. 
The  fragrance  of  the  flowers  crept  towards  her, 
through  the  open  window,  on  a  little  fitful  wind. 
A  bird,  that  had  built  just  outside  it,  wakened  by 
all  the  stir,  poured  forth  a  throatful  of  trills  and 
warbles.  It  was  plain  to  Hester  that  she  did  not 
belong  to  any  such  happy  world  as  this.  She 
longed  to  be  down  among  her  balmy  islands  and 
her  savages,  with  all  their  worthless  life  and  igno- 
rance. 

The  figures  in  the  garden  carne  nearer ;  was  it  — 
could  it  be  —  yes,  as  the  light  fell  fully  there,  she 
saw  that  it  was  Marcia,  —  Marcia  and  that  great 
fat  Joe  Jones,  Bella  and  Paul  Munster.  Marcia 
had  pointed  out  Paul  to  her  once  in  church,  and 
had  said  that  Bella  would  have  had  to  make  public 


86  HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MARKS. 

expiation  if  Miss  Marks  knew  she  wore  a  ring  that 
Paul  had  given  her. 

She  had  herself  once  said  that  if  she  were  to  be 
wrecked  on  a  desert  island,  she  had  rather  it  would 
be  with  Joe  than  anybody. 

They  had  passed  down  the  honeysuckle  alley 
while  Hester  was  thinking  of  this ;  and  just  as  she 
would  have  called  them  back  she  was  stricken 
with  shame  and  fear,  and  knew  Marcia  would 
never  want  to  speak  to  her  again ;  and  she  burst 
into  another  howl  that  stopped  only  as  it  swept 
over  her  that  they  would  take  it  for  some  dog's, 
and  she  reduced  it  to  a  series  of  sobs  and  gulps. 

As  she  crouched  there,  hugging  her  misery,  the 
dancing  ceased,  she  saw,  in  the  wing ;  the  sound 
of  feet  told  her  that  everybody  was  going  down  to 
the  dining-room  for  ice-cream  and  cake. 

Marcia  had  told  her  about  the  delights  of  that 
unknown  ice-cream,  for  Marcia  had  crept  into  the 
kitchen  and  had  had  a  piece  of  the  cake  yesterday ; 
and  she  would  have  none ;  and  her  throat  was  so 
hot  and  parched ! 

And  then  the  horn  and  the  violin  began  playing 
softly  a  melancholy  air  from  "  Trovatore,"  —  the 


r.     It  was  Marcia.     'I  've  got  some  ice  for  you,  da 
some  cake.'  "  —  PAGE  87. 


HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MARKS.  87 

duet  in  the  prison  scene,  with  its  unutterable 
sweetness  and  sadness ;  and  it  seemed  to  Hester 
that  nobody  else  was  ever  so  unhappy  as  she,  and 
nobody  else  ever  deserved  to  be ;  and  the  falling 
tears  kept  time  to  the  music. 

"  Hst !   Hst !    Hst ! "  whispered  something  softly 
under  the  window.     "  Hester !    Hst ! " 

She  leaned  far  out  and  over.     It  was  Marcia. 
"I've  got  some  ices  for  you,  dear,  and  some 
cake.      I  watched   my  chance,  and   Joe   cribbed 
them  for  me.     You  reach  down  and  I  '11  reach  up. 
They  're  just  luscious  ! " 

"  Oh  Marcia !  Marcia  darling  ! "  sobbed  Hester. 
"  Do  you  forgive  me  ? " 

"I  forgive  you  ?"  exclaimed  Marcia  imprudently. 
"  Well,  that 's  a  great  go  !     And  what  a  question, 
with  these  ices  melting  !  " 
"  But  do  you  ?  " 

"  What'  in  the  world  should  I  forgive  ?  I  'm 
glad  you  did  it !  It  was  perfectly  splendid  ;  it  did 
me  good  to  see  it,  and  so  it  did  Joe  !  Though,  of 
course,  you  know,"  she  added,  "  it  was  very  wicked. 
But  I  guess  Peggy  Payson  won't  put  out  her  toe 
again  in  a  hurry  ! " 


88  HESTEK   STANLEY  AT   ST.   MAEKS. 

"I  —  I  —  I  bit  it !"  said  Hester,  in  an  agony  of 
mortification  and  confession. 

"  Well  —  I  hope  it  hurt  her  !  She  deserved  it, 
the  spiteful  thing  !  Here,  dear,  they  '11  rnelt,  and 
they  're  so  nice,  —  reach  down  —  " 

"No,  Marcia  dear;  I  can't  have  them.  Miss 
Marks  does  n't  mean  ine  to  have  them.  I  'm  put 
here  for  punishment ;  arid  I  could  n't  take  them, 
really  —  " 

"  Why,  she  '11  never  know  !  " 

"  But  you  know  I  should  know,  and  I  can't. 
Oh,  I  wish  I  could !  I  arn  so  thirsty.  But  it 
would  be  wrong.  I  'm  bad  enough  now.  I 
must  n't." 

"  What  perfect  nonsense,  Hester  Stanley  ! " 

"  Don't  you  tempt  me,  Marcia  dear." 

"And  what  in  the  world  am  I  to  do  with 
them  ?  " 

"  '  When  in  doubt,  take  the  trick,' "  said  a  deeper 
voice.  And  Joe  Jones  solved  the  problem  by 
demolishing  the  contents  of  the  plate  in  double- 
quick  time. 

"  Now,  you  'd  better  eat  the  plate,"  said  Marcia 
scornfully. 


HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.   MARKS.  89 

"  No,"  said  Joe,  with  great  good-nature.  "  I  '11 
put  that  where  I  found  it.  Come  along  ! " 

"  I  '11  be  back  and  let  you  out  as  soon  as  I  can," 
whispered  Marcia.  "  Brownie  's  on  guard  now." 
And  then  Hester  was  alone  again. 

"  I  suppose  it  was  wrong  in  me  to  answer  her 
at  all,"  said  Hester  to  herself.  "  But  she  was  so 
good  and  kind  to  me  ! " 

And,  soothed  by  the  knowledge  that  Marcia,  at 
least,  stood  by  her,  presently  Hester's  head  drooped 
forward,  and  she  lay,  in  a  little  bunch,  on  the 
broad  window-seat,  utterly  exhausted,  and  lulled 
asleep  by  the  soft  rise  and  fall  of  the  tune  breathed 
by  the  horn  and  violin. 

When  she  awoke  all  was  still ;  there  were  no 
voices,  no  people,  no  music,  —  only  a  great  glare 
in  her  eyes.  It  was  Miss  Brown,  holding  a  lamp  ; 
and  beside  her,  stately  and  superb  and  fair,  in  her 
black  velvet  gown  and  string  of  pearls,  stood  Miss 
Marks. 

Hester  sprang  to  her  feet  on  the  window-sill  to 
face  them.  Miss  Brown  laughed,  in  spite  of  her 
severity.  What  a  pitiful  little  object  it  was  stand- 
ing there !  —  her  gauze  skirts  in  strings,  her  silk 


90  HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MARKS. 

stockings  torn,  her  rosy  wings  crushed  and  fallen, 
her  long  hair  in  snarls,  her  silver  star  jammed  and 
awry(  —  broken,  limp,  draggled,  rolled  in  dust  and 
tears  and  blood,  a  very  culprit  fay. 

She  hid  her  face  in  her  arms  with  cries  and  sobs, 
and  only  felt  as  if  she  had  died  and  been  forgiven 
when  Miss  Marks's  strong  arms  closed  round  her, 
and  Miss  Marks's  face  was  bent  above  her,  —  the 
soft,  warm,  velvet  cheek  against  her  own  and  wet 
with  her  stormy  tears,  —  and  she  was  being  carried 
off,  to  Miss  Brown's  wrathful  amazement,  to  Miss 
Marks's  own  room. 


HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MARKS.  91 


CHAPTER  VII. 

ladies,"  said  Miss  Marks,  the  next 

•**-  morning,  on  the  conclusion  of  the  prayers, 
"  you  were  witnesses  of  a  very  sad  occurrence  last 
night.  Nothing  in  the  history  of  the  school  has 
ever  given  me  more  pain  — " 

"  Oh,  I  know  it !  I  know  it ! "  wailed  a  little 
voice  from  a  head  bowed  on  a  desk. 

"  But  I  am  glad  to  say,"  continued  Miss  Marks, 
"  that  Hester  Stanley  realizes  the  shamefulness  of 
her  behavior,  and  has  begged  to  be  punished  as 
she  thinks  such  an  outburst  of  temper  deserves, 
and  has  expressed  her  willingness  to  expiate  her 
fault  either  by  dismissal  from  the  school  or  by 
a  term  of  solitary  imprisonment  on  bread  and 
water." 

There  was  just  the  beginning  of  a  smile  in  the 
corner  of  Miss  Marks's  eye,  that  became  visible 


92  HESTER   STANLEY  AT   ST.    MARKS. 

to  some  of  the  older  girls  before  the  exclamation 
"  Oh  ! "  had  quite  passed  their  lips. 

"  You  all  know,"  Miss  Marks  resumed,  —  not 
noticing  that  involuntary  remark,  —  "  that  I  do  not 
believe  in  the  expiation  of  sin  by  undergoing 
further  penance  or  suffering  for  it  than  that  which 
will  fix  the  fact  of  its  wrong-fulness  more  firmly'in 
our  minds,  or  enable  us  better  to  starve  out  and  con- 
trol the  passion  which  has  led  us  into  sin.  There- 
fore I  have  been  unwilling  to  condemn  Hester  to 
the  punishment  which  she  considers  meet  for  her 
offence ;  and  I  have  ordered,  instead,  that  she  shall 
speak  to  no  one,  and  no  one  shall  speak  to  her,  for 
the  period  of  one  week.  At  the  end  of  that  time 
I  hope  she  will  feel  fit  to  associate  with  people  of 
gentle  behavior." 

"Oh,  I  never  shall!  I  never  shall!"  sobbed 
Hester.  "  It 's  no  use  to  try  and  civilize  me  !  I 
had  better  go  back  to  my  savages  ! " 

"  In  the  mean  time,"  said  Miss  Marks,  "  the 
swimming  lessons  will  be  suspended,  and  —  " 

"I  wonder  what's  going  to  be  done  to  Peggy 
Payson  ? "  whispered  Marcia  to  Bella,  under  cover 
of  the  general  murmur,  and  while  Miss  Brown's 
eyes  were  rolled  in  sarcasm  to  the  ceiling. 


HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.   MARKS.  93 

"  As  for  Miss  Payson,"  Miss  Marks  went  on,  "  a 
young  woman  of  the  advanced  class,  nearly  twice 
the  size  of  her  victim,  who  deliberately  puts  out  a 
foot  and  trips  her,  and  gives  her  a  mortifying  fall, 
which,  for  all  she  knew,  might  have  done  serious 
injury,  —  what  shall  be  done  to  such  a  person  as 
that  ?  Well,  Marcia  ? "  as  a  hand  flew  up. 

"  I  .think,"  said  Marcia,  rising  a  moment  to 
speak,  as  the  custom  was,  "  that  if  Miss  Stanley 
deserves  solitary  imprisonment  on  bread  and  water, 
Miss  Payson  should  be  drawn  and  quartered." 

"Take  your  seat,  Miss  Meyer!"  .said  Miss 
Marks,  in  the  midst  of  the  te-he  that  followed. 
"  Do  you  really  think  this  is  a  subject  to  be 
ridiculed  ?  You  will  learn  and  repeat,  this  even- 
ing, before  the  school,  the  hundred  and  for- 
tieth Psalm,  in  which  the  singer  prays  to  be 
delivered  from  those  who  have  indulged  such 
passions  as  Margaret's  envy  and  Hester's  anger. 
Hester's  anger  was  indeed  terrible ;  but  I  doubt, 
after  all,  if,  in  its  effect  on  her  character,  its  indul- 
gence is  so  bad  as  that  of  the  envy,  malice,  and 
meanness  that  aroused  it.  I  am  at  a  loss  to  know 
how  to  punish  such  an  action  as  Margaret's ;  but 


94  HESTER   STANLEY  AT   ST.    MARKS. 

I  am  relieved  in  the  dilemma  by  Hester's  request 
that  nothing  shall  be  done  with  her.  Perhaps 
Hester  has  already  done  enough." 

"  Humph  ! "  said  Miss  Brown. 

"Whether  she  deserves  to  have  her  request 
granted  or  not,"  continued  Miss  Marks,  "I  am 
inclined  to  grant  it;. because,  if  there  is  a  spark  of 
nobility  left  in  Margaret,  she  can  have  no  worse 
punishment  than  that  of  owing  her  impunity  to 
the  person  whom  she  so  deliberately  injured.  The 
classes  will  form." 

"  One  moment,  Miss  Marks,"  said  Miss  Brown. 
"There  is  another  matter  wequiwing  your  attention. 
Last  night  two  of  the  young  ladies  were  observed 
walking  in  the  garden  with  two  young  gentlemen 
long  after  the  doors  were  locked.  And  those 
young  ladies  bwoke  into  the  house  and  tcwept  to 
their  beds  when  the  west  of  the  house  were  asleep. 
Who  the  culpwits  are  wemains  to  be  known." 

"  I  wonder  who  it  could  have  been,"  whispered 
Marcia  to  Bella,  who,  although  very  white,  could 
hardly  keep  from  giggling. 

"Are  you  perfectly  correct,  Miss  Brown  ? "  asked 
Miss  Marks,  with  a  grave  face. 


HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MARKS.  95 

"  Perfectly  corwect,"  said  Miss  Brown. 

"This  is  something  very  serious,"  said  Miss 
Marks,  taking  her  seat  again.  "  The  young  ladies 
who  were  guilty  of  this  offence,"  she  said,  break- 
ing the  silence  after  a  few  moments,  "  know  how 
grievously  they  have  violated  the  rules.  I  hope 
they  will  come  to  me  at  once  and  make  an  expla- 
nation." 

"They  never  will  in  the  world,  Miss  Marks," 
said  Miss  Brown,  in  an  undertone. 

"  Pray  be  quiet,  Miss  Brown,"  said  Miss  Marks, 
in  the  same  tone.  "  I  hope,"  she  added  aloud, 
"  that  the  care  I  have  spent  on  my  pupils  has  not 
been  so  wasted  that  any  two  of  them  will  allow 
all  the  others  to  remain  under  this  suspicion." 
But  nobody  moved,  or  volunteered  reply. 

"Of  course  you  are  aware,  Miss  Marks,"  said 
Miss  Brown,  "that  there  is  another  person  who 
knows  all  about  it.  Hester  Stanley,"  she  con- 
tinued, as  Miss  Marks  turned  on  her  with  a 
look  of  wonder,  "  was  in  a  window  looking  on 
the  garden,  and  could  not  have  failed  to  see 
them." 

"  Aha  ! "  said  Marcia,  under  her  breath. 


96  HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MARKS. 

"  Hester,  what  have  you  to  say  to  this  ? "  asked 
Miss  Marks.  There  was  no  reply.  "Did  you 
hear  me,  Hester?"  she  asked  again.  Still  there 
was  no  reply.  "  Don't  you  intend  to  answer  me, 
Hester  ? "  said  Miss  Marks,  this  time  in  a  higher 
key. 

Hester  arose,  and  stood  a  moment  balancing 
this  way  and  that.  Then,  pale  as  ashes,  and  look- 
ing, as  Marcia  afterward  said,  as  if  she  had  rather 
be  killed,  she  took  her  spelling-book  and  walked 
to  the  blackboard,  and,  ready  to  cry  with  vexation 
that  the  girls  should  see  her  ignorance  so  plainly 
and  her  inability  to  write,  she  chose  a  crayon  and 
printed  on  the  board,  with  slow  and  careful  com- 
parison of  the  letters  with  her  spelling-book,  amidst 
the  breathless  amazement  and  silence  of  teachers 
and  scholars,  the  words,  — 

"  I  am  forbidden  to  speak." 

Miss  Marks  laughed,  whether  she  would  or  not. 
She  knew  very  well  that  Hester  meant  no  imperti- 
nence. "  You  are  not  forbidden  to  speak  to  me," 
she  said.  "  You  are  commanded  to  do  so.  Did  you 
see  two  young  ladies  in  the  garden  last  evening, 
walking  alone  with  two  young  gentlemen  ? " 


HESTER   STANLEY  AT   ST.    MARKS.  97 

"At  what  time?"  asked  Hester,  after  a  brief 
hesitation. 

"  Oh,  you  don't  believe  she  's  going  to  tell ! " 
whispered  Marcia  to  the  universe. 

"  You  heard  what  Miss  Brown  said.  After  the 
doors  were  locked." 

"  No,  ma'am." 

"  She  's  a  trump  !  She 's  a  trump  !  "  whispered 
Marcia  again. 

"  You  are  telling  me  the  truth,  Hester  ? " 

"  I  went  to  sleep,  Miss  Marks,  while  the  band 
was  playing,  and  I  did  n't  wake  up  till  you  came." 

"  Very  well.  I  must  change  the  question,  I  see. 
I  did  n't  suppose  you  would  prevaricate."  Hester's 
face  turned  from  white  to  dark  purple  as  she  stood. 
"  Did  you  see  two  young  ladies  walking  there  with 
two  young  gentlemen  before  you  went  to  sleep  ? " 

"  Yes,  ma'arn." 

"  Who  were  they  ? " 

The  school  held  its  breath. 

"  I  can't  tell." 

"  She  means  she  won't  tell,"  said  Miss  Brown. 

"  I  would  really  be  obliged  to  you,  Miss  Brown," 
said  Miss  Marks,  with  an  impatient  gesture.  "Do 


98  HESTER   STANLEY   AT    ST.    MARKS. 

you  mean,  Hester,  that  you  are  not  going  to  tell 
me?" 

"  Yes,  ma'am,"  she  said,  trembling  from  head  to 
foot. 

"  Do  you  know  that  I  can  require  you  to  tell 
me  ? " 

"  You  cannot  require  me,"  she  said,  looking  up 
fearlessly  into  Miss  Marks's  face. 

"  The  stuff  that  martyrs  are  made  of ! "  whis- 
pered Marcia  exultingly. 

"  Cannot  ? " 

"Oh,  Miss  Marks!"  said  the  child,  "I  will 
always  confess  my  own  sins.  I  cannot  confess- 
those  of  others  ! " 

"  Would  you  find  it  as  hard  to  tell  if  it  were 
Margaret  Payson's  sin  ? " 

"I  —  I  don't  know.    I  am  afraid  I  should  n't  — ." 

"So  it  was  not  Margaret,  at  any  rate,  it  seems," 
said  Miss  Marks,  with  a  smile  reflected  on  the 
faces  of  the  school.  "  Then  you  absolutely  refuse 
to  tell,"  she  said  slowly.  "  Not  even  if  I  excuse 
you  from  your  week  of  punishment  ? " 

"  I  don't  want  you  to  excuse  me,  Miss  Marks ;  I 
want  to  be  punished,"  Hester  exclaimed. 


HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MARKS.  99 

"  And  do  you  know  what  will  be  the  result  of 
your  continued  refusal  ?  " 

"  Oh,  I  don't  know ;  something  dreadful,  I  sup- 
pose ! "  she  cried,  bursting  into  tears.  "  But  indeed, 
indeed,  Miss  Marks,  you  can't  want  me  to  tell ! " 

"  You  are  right,  Hester.  And  you  have  gone 
through  a  trying  ordeal.  As  the  last  comer, 
you  apparently  did  not  yet  know  that  I  never 
allow  one  young  lady  to  tell  tales  of  another.  If 
you  had  told,  I  should  have  a  very  different 
opinion  of  you.  I  have  usually  my  own  way  of 
discovering  guilt.  My  grandfather  used  to  range 
his  children  before  him  when  he  wished  to  learn 
who  was  the  offender  in  any  wrong-doing,  and  take 
down  the  almanac  and  consult  the  signs  of  the 
zodiac  there,  the  guilt  of  the  guilty  one,  mean- 
while, growing  more  and  more  plain  to  see.  I  know 
an  old  farmer,  too,  who  used  to  say,  '  The  one  that 
stole  the  melon  has  a  bit  of  cotton  on  the  end  of 
his  nose,'  and  quick  as  thought  the  guilty  hand 
would  go  up  to  brush  away  that  bit  of  cotton.  I 
hardly  resort  to  such  means  as  that ;  but  guilt  has 
its  own  writing,  when  one  knows  how  to  read  it, 
whether  the  young  lady  turns  pale,  as  you  do, 


100  HESTER   STANLEY  AT   ST.    MARKS. 

Hester,  giggles,  as  Bella  Brook  does,  or  keeps  up 
a  running  whisper,  as  Marcia  does.  I  shall  say 
no  more  at  present,  hoping  that  the  young  ladies 
who  have  so  grossly  disobeyed  my  regulations,  and 
brought  such  a  scandal  on  my  school,  will  apolo- 
gize and  give  me  some  reason  for  their  conduct. 
You  can  now  call  the  classes,  Miss  Park." 

"I  think  I  hear  the  weason,"  muttered  Miss 
Brown,  as  the  girls  filed  by  to  the  recitation- 
room. 

"  What  are  you  going  to  do  about  it,  March  ? " 
whispered  Bella,  as  they  crossed  in  the  vestibule. 

"  Oh,  I  suppose  I  may  as  well  own  up.  You  see 
she  knows  who  it  is  —  " 

"It  —  it's  pretty  sure  to  expel  us  —  it  ought 
to.  Oh,  I  wish  I  'd  never  seen  Waterways ! " 

"  We  can  throw  ourselves  on  her  mercy ;  and 
St.  Marks  is  tender-hearted.  However — I  don't 
know  —  " 


HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MAEKS.  101 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

course  there  were  a  number  of  the  girls 
who  felt  Hester's  willingness  to  expiate  her 
offence  a  sort  of  reproach  to  themselves,  —  girls, 
who,  if  not  always  eager  to  do  wrong,  were  always 
eager  to  evade  penalty,  —  and  these,  when  just 
within  hearing,  would  mention  her  as  "goody- 
goody,"  and  lie  in  wait  to  make  her  speak, 
although  failing  in  the  attempt. 

"  What  a  thing  it  is  to  be  a  sphinx  and  not 
open  your  mouth,"  said  Bessy  Byrnes,  with  a  side- 
long look  at  the  silent  little  creature,  who  would 
have  excited  the  pity  of  older  people. 

"  A  sphinx  looks  as  if  it  knew  so  much !  And 
if  it  don't  open  its  mouth,  nobody  '11  know  it  don't 
know  anything,"  answered  Fanny  Doane. 

"  Take  care,  then,  how  you  open  yours,  Fanny," 
cried  Bella,  at  Hester's  quick  upward  glance,  as 


102  HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MARKS. 

she  sauntered  about,  with  her  arm  round  Charlotte 
Eisley's  waist  in  Marcia's  absence.  .  " '  Don't '  for 
'  does  n't ! '  Hester  Stanley  knows  too  much  to 
make  that  mistake." 

"Girls,  say!"  cried  Fanny.  "Why  is  Hester 
Stanley  like  one  of  the  parts  of  "speech  ? " 

"  Because  she 's  up  in  grammar,  because  she  's 
an  indefinite  article,  because  she  declines  to 
speak  — 

"You  don't  decline  'to  speak,'  you  conjugate 
it." 

"  Because  she 's  in  the  imperfect  then,  or  because 
she  's  a  proper  noun,  third  person,  very  singular, 
or  —  " 

"  You  're  not  up  in  grammar,  any  way,  Fanny 
Doane,  and  I  don't  believe  you  can  tell  the  answer 
yourself !  I  say,  girls,  why  is  Fanny  Doane  like 
'  shoofly ' ? " 

"  Because  she  bothers  ? " 

"  Because  she 's  always  in  the  vocative." 

"  Dear  me,  how  learned !  Horrida  Bella !  "We 
talk  Latin,  dress  in  satin,  and  fry  pound  cake  for 
luncheon —  " 

"'Tis  not  so  nice,"  sang  Bessy,  joining  in,  "as 
water-ice,  but  does  quite  well  to  munch  on." 


HESTER   STANLEY  AT   ST.    MARKS.  103 

"  Well,  tell  me  this,"  cried  Charlotte.  «  Why  is 
Miss  Brown  like  a  mathematical  point  ?  Give  it 
up  ?  Because  she  has  position,  but  not  magni- 
tude !  "  Unanimity  of  opinion  on  this  subject  re- 
stored harmony ;  but,  under  cover  of  the  sparring, 
Hester  had  slipped  away,  only  to  meet  a  fresh 
swarm  in  another  place,  however. 

"  How  thankful  I  ought  to  be,"  said  one  little 
piece,  "  that  I  was  born  in  a  civilized  country  and 
not  among  cannibals.  I  might  have  been  just 
such  a  little  fuwy,  as  Miss  Brown  says." 

"You  haven't  such  great  cause  for  gratitude, 
after  all,  then,"  said  Marcia,  as  she  walked  up  and 
down  conning  her  Psalm. 

"  It 's  fortunate  for  you,  March,  that  you  are  not 
obliged  to  do  penance  by  holding  your  tongue ; 
you'd  burst!  Tell  us,  are  they  Catholics,  to  do 
penance,  down  in  those  South  Sea  places?  I 
thought  they  were  heathen." 

"What  a  wicked  girl  you  are,  Dora!  The 
heathen  aren't  half  so  wicked." 

"  Oh,  we  forgot  what  you  are  doing,  Marcia ! 
Of  course  you  ought  to  know  about  the  heathen, 
how  they  rage  and  imagine  vain  things,  when  you 
are  studying  the  Psalms  so  ! " 


104  HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MARKS. 

"Now,  look  here,  young  women,  I've  just  one 
word  to  say  to  you.  Those  of  you  that  want  to 
learn  to  swim  this  year  had  better  keep  civil 
tongues  in  your  heads  when  with  the  swimming 
mistress." 

And  then  they  all  groaned  at  Marcia,  and  little 
unregenerate  Hester,  who  would  have  like'd  to  slap 
them  every  one,  had  to  steal  away  for  fear  she 
should  do  it.  She  had  called  to  mind  her  old 
promise  to  Maud  many  times  that  day. 

Nor  did  Hester  dare  stay  a  moment  where 
Marcia  was,  or  accept  a  caress  from  her,  or  let 
her  lock  her  arms  in  hers ;  for  all  that  seemed  to 
her  a  tacit  violation  of  the  understanding  that  she 
was  to  receive  no  companionship.  But  she  got 
her  own  Bible  and  thought  it  no  wrong  to  study 
the  same  Psalm,  at  any  rate. 

"She's  March's  private  property,  this  swimming 
mistress,"  said  Fanny  Doane,  joining  the  new 
group.  "What  character  of  Frederika  Bremer's 
do  you  suppose  she  thinks  Marcia 's  like  ?  I 
know  you  won't  guess  it.  Why,  Ma  chere  m&re, 
of  course ! " 

"You  ought  to  be  ashamed  of  yourself,  Fanny 


HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MARKS.  105 

Doane ! "  said  Marcia  Meyer,  laughing,  and  pro- 
voked, and  burying  her  nose  in  her  chapter  again. 

"  I  am,"  said  Fanny,  "  and  I  came  on  purpose  to 
kiss  and  make  friends.  I  won't  tease  you  any 
more,  Hester."  And  then  there  was  a  little  love- 
feast  of  reconciliations,  in  which,  although  doubt- 
ful if  she  might,  Hester  laughed,  her  white  teeth 
shining  in  her  pretty  brown  face,  but  otherwise 
she  kept  a  resolute  silence. 

Long  before  night,  Hester,  who  had  a  great  ver- 
bal memory,  had  learned  the  Psalm  so  that  she 
could  have  said  it  backward  on  requirement.  Mar- 
cia, however,  was  still  wrestling  with  it  when  called 
upon  by  Miss  Brown  for  recital ;  and  she  came  down 
from  her  lofty  back  seat  to  a  desk,  as  it  happened, 
quite  near  the  one  where  Hester  humbly  sat. 

Marcia  got  through  the  opening  very  well, 
tripped,  but  recovered  herself,  on  the  third  verse, 
"  They  have  sharpened  their  tongues  like  a  ser- 
pent ;  adders'  poison  is  under  their  lips,"  lost  her 
way  with, "  The  proud  have  hid  a  snare  for  me,  and 
cords ;  they  have  spread  a  net  by  the  wayside," 
stumbled  again,  and  broke  down  altogether,  on, 
"  Grant  not,  0  Lord,  the  desires  of  the  wicked  : 


106  HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MARKS. 

further  not  his  wicked  device."  She  looked  up 
aucl  she  looked  down,  stood  first  on  one  foot  and 
then  on  the  other,  was  ready  with  a  reply  to  Miss 
Brown's  reprimand  for  her  awkward  position,  but 
could  n't  for  the  life  of  her  recall  the  words.  "  Oh, 
my  goodness  gracious  me,"  Hester  could  hear  her 
whispering  to  herself,  "  what  in  the  world  is  it  ? " 

"  Miss  Meyer,"  said  Miss  Brown,  "  I  will  give 
you  two  minutes  in  which  to  wecall  it.  At  the  end 
of  that  time,  if  you  cannot  say  it,  you  will  go  to 
your  seat,  and  have  no  supper  till  you  have  learned 
both  this  and  the  next  Psalm." 

It  was  trembling  on  Hester's  lips,  "  Grant  not, 
0  Lord,  the  desires  of  the  wicked."  Where  would 
be  the  harm  of  her  saying  it  over  ?  But  as  she 
longed  to  do  it,  the  words  seemed  to  start  out  in 
letters  of  fire  before  her  eyes;  she  felt  that  her 
desire  to  say  them  over  so  that  Marcia  coiild  hear 
was  a  desire  of  the  wicked,  it  was  a  violation  of 
her  promise  to  Miss  Marks.  But  yet  she  knew 
that,  failing,  Marcia  was  to  be  punished,  and  that 
would  be  agony  to  her.  "  Hester,  you  little  goose, 
why  don't  you  prompt  me  ? "  came  a  very  distinct 
whisper  that  made  every  drop  of  blood  forsake  her 


HESTER   STANLEY  AT   ST.   MAEKS.  107 

face.  And  all  at  once,  seeing  that  if  it  had  not 
been  for  her  evil  temper  Marcia  would  not  have 
had  the  verses  to  commij  any  way,  and  that  now 
Marcia  was  to  be  punished  still  more  because, 
owing  to  the  consequences  of  that  evil  temper,  be- 
yond anything  else,  she  could  not  be  prompted, 
the  thing  suddenly  became  more  than  she  could 
bear,  and  the  words  seemed  to  explode  from  her 
mouth  as  she  cried  out  sharply,  "  Grant  not,  0 
Lord,  the  desires  of  the  wicked ;  further  not  his 
wicked  device  ! "  clapped  her  hands  over  her  lips, 
stood  up,  and  then  fell  back  in  her  seat  with  a 
dazed  and  swimming  sensation  that  she  was  about 
to  receive  sentence  of  death :  she  had  broken  her 
word,  she  had  broken  the  rules,  and  she  had  not 
helped  Marcia. 

She  was  mistaken ;  she  had  helped  Marcia  very 
much  indeed.  "  Oh,  yes,  Miss  Brown,"  said  that 
young  lady  glibly.  "  I  should  have  said  it  myself 
in  time."  And  before  Miss  Brown  could  recover 
from,  her  indignant  surprise  and  restore  the  titter- 
ing girls  to  order,  Marcia  had  spun  along  and 
finished  the  Psalm. 

"  I  will  settle  with  Miss  Stanley  by  and  by," 


108  HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MARKS. 

said  Miss  Brown ;  "  but  as  for  you,  Miss  Meyer, 
I  don't  know  whether  you  would  have  said  it  your- 
self or  not,  and  am  in  doubt  as  to  whether  I  ought 
not  to  demand  the  other  Psalm  of  you." 

"  I  don't  suppose  you  mean  to  doubt  my  word, 
any  way,  Miss  Brown,"  said  Marcia,  with  immense 
dignity.  "  It 's  absurd  to  think  I  could  n't  have 
said  it  in  time,  —  I  did  n't  say  how  much  time. 
And  as  for  the  other  Psalm,  certainly  I  was  not 
sent  here  to  commit  the  Bible  to  memory,  and  a 
whole  day,  as  it  is,  has  been  lost  from  my  educa- 
tion by  this  Sunday-school  exercise  —  " 

"  Take  your  seat,  Miss  Meyer,"  said  Miss  Brown, 
exasperated  out  of  all  patience  ;  "  and  to-morwow 
you  will  be  pwepared  with  one  hundwed  additional 
lines  in  your  Virgil ! "  Marcia  went  to  her  seat 
snapping  her  thumbs  and  fingers  defiantly  as 
her  hands  hung  by  her  side;  and  half  an  hour 
afterward  she  slammed  her  Virgil  down  on  the 
desk,  so  that  all  the  school  could  see  that  she  had 
read  the  lines,  —  translation  and  Virgil  being  mere 
pleasure  to  Marcia. 


HESTER   STANLEY  AT   ST.   MAKKS.  109 


CHAPTER  IX. 

"  T  DON'T  know  what  I  am  to  do,"  said  Miss 
Brown  despondently,  that,  night  in  Miss 
Marks's  parlor.  "I  am  weally  tempted  to  leave 
the  school.  I  seem  to  be  out  of  place.  I  cannot 
master  that  Marcia  Meyer,  try  what  I  will ;  the 
heaviest  task  is  play  to  her." 

"My  dear  Miss  Brown,",said  Miss  Marks  gently, 
"  why  attempt  to  master  the  young  ladies  ? " 

"You  don't  mean  to  let  them  — 

"  I  mean,  if  you  will  excuse  my  saying  so,  that 
if  the  girls  felt  you  a  little  more  their  friend,  and 
not  so  much  their  —  " 

"  That 's  just  where  it  is  !  I  can't  be  the  fwiend 
of  such  a  little  pack  of  waveniDg  wolves  as  some 
of  these  girls  are  !  They  ought  to  be  in  cages." 

Miss  Marks  laughed,  even  though  disapproving 
such,  strong  expression.  "Not  quite  so  bad  as 


110  HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MARKS. 

that,"  she  said.  "  They  are  only  gay  children,  full 
of  animal  spirits,  needing  to  be  led  rather  than 
controlled.  Of  course  I  don't  want  to  interfere 
with  your  method ;  but  did  you  never  think 
that  instead  of  correcting  them  before  each  other 
and  setting  them  tasks  in  what  they  consider  a 
vindictive  way,  it  might  be  better  sometimes  to 
see  them  privately,  and  reason  with  them  a  little, 
state  your  difficulties,  and  rather  enlist  them  on 
your  side?  Girls  have  a  great  deal  of  chivalry, 
if  I  may  use  the  word  in  connection  with  them, 
and  if  they  once  fairly  understood  the  difficulties 
of  your  position,  confided  by  you  yourself,  I  think 
they  would  make  it  a  matter  of  feeling  and  honor 
not  to  increase  them." 

"I dare  say  you  are  wight,  Miss  Marks,"  said  Miss 
Brown,  growing  only  more  melancholy;  "but  I've 
such  an  irwitable  temper,  it 's  about  impossible." 

"Then,"  said  Miss  Marks,  smiling,  "you  ought 
to  take  that  temper  in  hand,  first  of  all.  I  did 
mine." 

"  Oh,  you  never  had  any  temper,  Miss  Marks," 
said  Miss  Brown  gloomily.  "You  were  born  a 
saint,  and  —  " 


HESTER    STANLEY   AT    ST.    MARKS.  Ill 

"Indeed,  you  must  not  talk  so,"  said  Miss 
Marks,  with  a  sigh.  "  Once  I  was  as  hot-headed 
as  Hester.  Speaking  of  Hester  —  " 

"  Well,  there,  Miss  Marks,  I  must  say  I  think 
you  are  mistaken.  That  child  is  as  deep  as  she  is 
violent." 

"  I  am  sure  she  is  not.  I  think  I  understand 
her  perfectly,  and  you  may  leave  her  to  me  en- 
tirely. At  any  rate,  I  will  attend  to  her  myself 
concerning  this  last  affair." 

And  that  is  how  it  came  to  pass  that  the  sub- 
ject of  her  latest  outburst  was  never  mentioned 
to  Hester  at  all,  Miss  Marks  feeling  that,  in  the 
overwrought  state  of  her  nerves,  it  had  been  some- 
thing beyond  the  child's  mastery,  and  that  the 
immediate  thing  to  do  was  to  strengthen  her  self- 
control. 

But  Hester  felt  it  a  case  of  severely  letting  her 
alone,  and  that  the  absence  of  rebuke  was  but  an 
expression  of  the  contempt  her  conduct  deserved ; 
and  she  went  about  her  tasks  next  day  in  sorrow 
and  shame. 

But  she  was  not  a  person  to  be  long  in  gloom ; 
her  mercurial  temperament  lifted  her  soon  over 


112  HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.   MARKS. 

her  difficulties,  and  in  a  day  or  two  she  found  it 
no  particular  reason  for  unhappiness  that  she 
could  not  talk  with  the  girls,  with  the  exception 
of  Marcia ;  and  she  kept  well  out  of  Marcia's  way, 
fearing  that  even  a  kiss  might  be  speech  between 
them.  She  learned  her  lessons;  and  then  she 
took  her  little  guitar  and  went  wandering  through 
the  garden  and  down  to  the  shore  for  recreation. 
There  was  something  touching  in  the  lonely  figure 
of  the  little  creature  going  up  and  down  the 
garden  aisles  among  the  flowers ;  but,  after  a  little, 
she  was  not  at  all  sad,  and  presently  was  living  in 
a  world  of  her  own,  a  world  peopled  by  the  beings 
of  the  stories  told  to  her  by  Marcia  in  the  two 
days  before  the  play,  —  the  fairies  of  English  and 
German  legends.  She  had  read  the  poem  of  the 
"  Culprit  Fay,"  too ;  and  she  was  enacting  it  in 
countless  varying  ways  quite  by  herself,  sending 
herself  with  her  guitar  on  all  sorts  of  romantic 
quests  for  desired  star-beams  and  magical  drops 
of  dew,  and  coming  back  to  receive  her  meed  of 
the  Fairy  Queen,  temporarily  residing  in  a  great 
rose-bush;  sometimes  accounting  for  a  crack  in 
the  frescoing  of  the  school-room  wall  by  con- 


HESTER   STANLEY  AT   ST.    MARKS.  113 

sidering  it  as  a  hidden  door  into  fairyland,  beyond 
which  all  the  wonders-  and  splendors  of  her  imagi- 
nation were  stored ;  and  often  searching  the  grass- 
plots  for  traces  of  the  rings  in  which  the  elves 
had  danced  over  night.  Sometimes,  too,  she  went 
down  to  the  water's  edge,  remembering  the  great 
supernatural  beings  of  the  stories  of  the  islands 
whence  she  came ;  but  they  were  on  a  grander 
scale,  living  under  those  southern  waters  of  all 
delicious  hues,  and,  until  she  read  Tennyson's  Sea 
Fairies,  did  not  please  her  fancy  like  these  tiny 
elves  that  she  could  picture  dancing  on  the  tips  of 
the  grass-blades,  swinging  on  the  grape-tendrils, 
and  drinking  honey  from  the  honeysuckle's  horns. 
I  suppose  Marcia  divined  a  little  what  was 
going  on  in  Hester's  mind,  for  she  talked  about  it 
to  Miss  Marks,  and  one  day  Miss  Marks  left  in 
Hester's  way  a  volume  of  Shakspeare  open  at  the 
play  of  the  Midsummer  Night's  Dream.  Of  course 
it  caught  her  eye,  for  when  you  are  thinking  of 
anything  all  your  senses  seem  to  be  on  the  alert 
about  it,  and  in  a  few  minutes  she  was  as  good 
as  buried  in  the  book,  first  going  through  it  labo- 
riously, and  then,  again,  with  delighted  and  dis- 


114  HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MARKS. 

tracted  haste,  —  the  rest  of  the  play  a  matter  of 
small  moment,  but  the  fairy  scenes  her  own 
revelry. 

All  at  once  it  occurred  to  Hester  that  she  was 
having  a  very  good  time ;  that  this  was  a  singular 
way  of  punishing  herself  for  a  burst  of  temper  ; 
that  she  must  no  more  enjoy  the  society  of  fairies 
than  of  other  people,  and  even  her  guitar  was 
a  voice,  listening  to  which  was  like  breaking 
her  promise.  She  shut  the  book  and  put  her 
guitar  away,  and  took  double  tasks  in  her  lesson- 
books,  and  lived  through  such  an  exceedingly 
dreary  day  that  when,  on  Sunday,  —  Miss  Marks 
having  gone  with  them  quietly  to  church  in  the 
morning,  — -  they  were  given  over  to  Miss  Brown's 
charge  for  the  afternoon  service,  bent  on  mischief, 
if  it  were  Sunday,  and  that  lady  marshalled  them 
with  her  parasol,  calling  to  this  one  and  beckoning 
to  that,  running  first  on  one  side  and  then  on 
another,  as  Marc  i  a  said,  "  like  a  distracted  hen 
with  a  lot  of  ducklings,"  the  walk,  which  was 
wont  to  be  a  very  unpleasant  performance  to 
Hester,  seemed  to  her  like  the  most  cheerful  and 
amusing  of  picnics. 


HESTER   STANLEY  AT   ST.    MARKS.  115 

But  when  night  came,  and  she  lay  in  bed,  Hester 
felt  a  great  serenity  within  herself  to  think  how 
sincerely  she  had  endeavored  to  do  right.  It 
seemed  to  her  that  little  Maud  was  standing  by 
her  pillow  and  smiling  upon  her.  She  wanted 
to  whisper  to  her  that  she  was  certainly  trying  to 
meet  her  in  heaven,  —  but  then  that  would  have 
been  just  as  bad  as  speaking  to  Marcia. 

On  Wednesday  Miss  Marks  sent  for  Hester. 
"  Well,"  she  said  pleasantly,  "  you  have  been  in 
fairyland,  it  seems." 

"  Oh,  Miss  Marks,  I  know  it  was  wrong  !  And 
I  left  off  amusing  myself  on  Saturday,  and  if  you 
think  I  ought  to  make  up  the  days  — 

"  My  dear  child,  one  can  be  as  morbid  and  un- 
wise in  punishing  one's  self  as  in  anything  else. 
No,  indeed,  we  have  had  quite  enough  of  that. 
But  what  if  I  should  tell  you  that  your  fairy  stories 
are  all  true,  —  that  there  is  a  Puck  who  really  can 
put  a  girdle  round  the  earth,  and  in  less  than  forty 
minutes  ;  that  there  is  one  of  the  great  genii  who 
takes  you  on  his  back  and  swims  through  the 
Atlantic  with  you ;  that  things  go  on  in  this  world 
much  as  if  these  fairies  did  them ;  that  there  are 


116  HESTER   STANLEY  AT   ST.    MARKS. 

little  unseen  powers  like  elves  running  up  and 
down  the  sunbeams  every  day  to  make  the  flowers 
and  grasses  and  to  color  the  clouds ;  that  there  are 
three  of  these  unseen  powers  always  to  be  found 
in  the  air,  two  of  them  always  to  be  found  in  every 
drop  of  water  — 

"  Miss  Marks  !  " 

"  Yes,  indeed ;  and  the  names  of  the  two  are 
oxygen  and  hydrogen.  As  you  improve,  so  that 
you  can  take  up  chemistry  and  natural  philosophy, 
to  say  nothing  of  geology  and  astronomy,  you  will 
find  that  science  is  one  long  fairy  tale,  full  of 
things  that  seem  just  as  impossible  and  wondrous 
as  the  things  done  in  the  fairy  stories  of  the 
books." 

"  Oh,  Miss  Marks,"  cried  Hester,  with  sparkling 
eyes,  "  do  you  believe  I  ever  shall  improve  ? " 


HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MAKES.  117 


CHAPTER   X. 

~TT  was  wearing  towards  the  long  vacation,  and 
-*-  Hester  had  had  no  word  from  her  father  yet. 
It  was  unaccountable  to  her ;  but  still  she  trusted 
him  so  that  she  felt  everything  he  did  would 
come  out  right.  Even  to  Miss  Marks  it  seemed 
singular,  although  she  said  nothing.  Miss  Brown 
contented  herself  with  remarking  to  the  other 
teachers  that  it  was  lucky  the  man  had  paid  not 
merely  the  half-yearly  bills  in  advance,  but  the 
whole  year's,  and  left  a  sum  of  money  for  contin- 
gencies besides,  —  a  thing  of  which  'Hester  herself 
never  thought,  as,  not  yet  worrying  too  much  at 
her  father's  silence,  she  had  skipped  about  the 
halls  and  gardens  with  Marcia,  when  she  might. 

"  How  you  do  follow  Marcia  round  ! "  said  Miss 
Park  good-naturedly,  as  the  child  came  dancing 
down  the  grass  one  day  in  recreation. 

"  Oh,  I  love  her  so  ! "  exclaimed  Hester. 


118  HESTER   STANLEY  AT   ST.    MARKS. 

"  She  means,"  said  Dora,  "  that  she  is  so  proud 
to  be  noticed  by  her  —  " 

Hester  suddenly  stayed  her  little  dancing  feet. 
"  I  proud  —  proud  to  be  noticed  —  to  be  noticed 
by  any  of  you ! "  she  cried,  her  face  growing  dark 
and  her  eyes  dangerous  in  one  of  her  sudden 
passions.  "  I !  T,  who  am  waited  on  at  home  by 
the  daughters  of  princes  — 

"  Come,  come,  Hester  ! "  said  Miss  Park,  "  recol- 
lect yourself.  It  is  something  for  you  to  be  proud 
of  when  a  girl  in  one  of  the  advanced  classes 
chooses  you  for  a  friend,  —  you,  hardly  out  of  your 
primer.  As  for  what  you  just  said,  princes  would 
be  no  better  than  other  people  if  they  were  here ; 
not  so  good,  in  fact,  if  they  had  no  education  and 
wore  no  clothes  to  speak  of,  like  most  of  your 
South  Sea  Island  princes.  The  only  rank  in  this 
country  is  given  by  education,  as  I  heard  Miss 
Marks  tell  you." 

And  while  Miss  Park's  mild  voice  ran  on,  the 
color  began  to  leave  Hester's  face  and  the  sparkle 
her  eye. 

"  Don't  you  agree  with  me  ? "  said  Miss  Park. 

"I  suppose  you  must  be  right,"  said  Hester, 


HESTER   STANLEY  AT   ST.    MARKS.  119 

with  a  trembling  tone.  "You  have  always  seemed 
to  be,  I  remember.  I  suppose  I  am  not  the  equal  of 
anybody  here ;  but  I  never  thought  of  being  proud 
about  Marcia.  I  love  her  so ! " 

Then  Miss  Park  put  her  finger  under  Hester's 
chin,  as  Marcia  had  once  done,  tipping  the  pretty 
dark  face  to  the  light,  and  kissing  the  red  lips. 
"I  don't  know  about  your  not  being  the  equal 
of  anybody  here,"  she  said.  "  When  I  find  your 
superior  in  some  things,  I  will  let  you  know." 

After  that  there  was  something  touching  in 
Hester's  new  humility  as  she  hovered  round 
Marcia,  till  Fanny  Doane,  who  often  seemed  to 
love  a  bit  of  mischief-making  herself,  told  the 
latter  of  Dora's  malice,  and  Marcia  laughed  at 
Hester  for  her  pains,  and  told  Dora  what  she 
thought  of  her. 

"Education  !"  said  Marcia,  "there  are  all  sorts  of 
educations.  I  can  extract  the  cube  of  that  ball  of 
butter  without  winking,  but  can  I  speak  French  — 
the  most  enlightened  language  on  earth,  Madame 
Cherdidi  says  —  like  a  native,  as  Hester  does,  if 
I  'in  in  forty  advanced  classes  ?  Can  I  dance 
and  draw  as  Hester  does,  and  play  on  the  guitar, 


120  HESTER   STANLEY  AT   ST.    MARKS. 

and  embroider  —  oh,  what; an  idiot  you  are,  Dora 
Jepson ! " 

Yet,  although  Hester  had  begun  to  be  so  happy, 
it  grew  to  be  a  great  drawback  to  her  happiness 
that  day  by  day  went  by  and  still  no  word  came 
from  her  father.  She  could  not  understand  it; 
but  she  felt  that  if  she  could  only  do  something  to 
please  him,  she  would  be  so  much  nearer  to  him. 
And  she  did  her  utmost  at  all  her  tasks,  and  the 
quires,  so  to  say,  of  laborious  script  that  she 
despatched  by  mail  to  him  filled  up  a  great  deal 
of  her  time,  and  cultivated  her  handwriting.  She 
learned  very  quickly,  although  sometimes  she  for- 
got as  quickly ;  and  a  reward  of  merit  that  Miss 
Marks  allowed  her  was  permission  to  go  into  the 
laboratory  during  the  chemical  experiments  to  see 
water  boil  in  a  sheet  of  paper,  or  chlorine  bleach 
a  spray  of  rose-leaves,  or  else  to  listen  to  the 
recitation  of  the  class  in  astronomy. 

She  needed  no  more  than  the  hint  she  got, 
as  she  listened,  concerning  the  wrong  side  of  the 
moon,  that  side  which  is  never  turned  to  us,  to 
people  it  with  all  the  immaterial  creatures  of  her 
fancy;  and  when  she  saw  it  rising,  round  and 


HESTER   STANLEY  AT   ST.   MARKS.  121 

radiant  through  the  mellow  mist  above  the  garden, 
it  seemed  to  her  the  very  abode  and  resting- 
place  of  all  her  sprites. 

She  told  Marcia  about  it  during  the  study  hour 
in  which  they  were  not  in  full  school  discipline, 
but  were  supposed  to  be  studying,  with  liberty 
now  and  then  to  speak  to  one  another  on  the 
subject  of  their  studies,  and  with  a  single  teacher 
present  to  keep  order,  and  Marcia  read  to  her  in  a 
whisper  the  ballad  of  Tarn  O'Shanter,  — 

"The  piper  loud  and  louder  blew, 
The  dancers  quick  and  quicker  flew,"  — 

nothing  of  which  did  Hester  comprehend  but  its 
procession  of  witches  and  warlocks,  and  the  pun- 
ishment Marcia  received  for  reading  it. 

"  The  idea,"  said  the  irrepressible  Marcia,  then, 
"  of  sending  a  person  to  bed  for  twenty-four  hours 
for  reading  a  classic !  I  have  heard  my  father  call 
it  so.  Not  but  that  I  had  just  as  lief  go  to  bed, 
for  we  are  always  hustled  up  so  in  the  morning 
that  I  think  every  girl  in  the  school  would  enjoy 
it  —  " 

"Miss  Meyer!  I  weally  shall  wepdrt  you  — 
"  There 's  a  great  smooch  on  your  cheek,  Miss 
Brown/'  said  Marcia  coolly. 


122  HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MARKS. 

"No,  the  other  one,"  as,  without  thinking,  Miss 
Brown  passed  her  hand  over  her  left  cheek. 

"  So  unfortunate,"  said  Marcia,  with  all  the  im- 
pertinence she  could  muster;  "now  it's  on  both!" 
And  all  the  girls  tittered,  for  poor  Miss  Brown's 
fingers,  which  were  always  sharpening  pencils, 
always  bore  the  traces  of  their  work.  And  then 
Marcia  marched  off  to  bed  in  triumph. 

As  Miss  Brown  hesitated,  for  a  moment,  between 
a  desire  to  rush  after  Marcia  and  give  her  a  good 
shaking,  and  her  consciousness  of  the  smooches 
on  her  face,  Hester  stood  beside  her,  timidly  offer- 
ing a  clean  wet  sponge,  and  murmuring,  "  Oh,  if 
you  please,  Miss  Brown,  I  think  I  ought  to  go  to 
bed  too"  —  and  the  next  thing  the  child  knew 
was  a  ringing  box  on  the  ear  that  sent  her  and  her 
sponge  flying. 

For  a  moment,  after  regaining  her  balance, 
Hester  stood  and  glared  at  Miss  Brown,  with  her 
eyes  flaming  and  both  her  hands  thrust  out.  She 
was  not  conscious  of  anything  till  she  began  to 
feel  that  if  she  had  been  big  enough  she  would 
have  killed  her.  It  was  the  first  blow  she  had 
ever  had. 


HESTER   STANLEY  AT   ST.   MAKES.  123 

Then  her  heart  was  beating  furiously,  and  she 
was  thinking,  "  This  is  what  they  call  civilization ! 
In  my  islands,  I  never  saw  a  savage  strike  a 
slave ! "  And  then  she  was  white  as  ashes,  remem- 
bering how  horribly  wicked  she  had  been  in  that 
brief  moment  of  passion,  and  was  walking  to  her 
seat. 

"  Hester  has  learned  to  control  her  temper  first," 
said  Bella  Brook  quite  audibly. 

"  Oh  ! "  cried  Miss  Brown,  slapping  her  book 
together, "  I  'd  wather  pick  wags  in  the  stweet  than 
—  than  —  Such  a  parcel—  '  And  she  rang  the 
bell  violently  for  Miss  Park  to  take  her  place,  and 
flounced  out  of  the  room.  And  Hester,  asking  to 
go  out,  went  another  way  and  washed  her  face  as 
if  she  could  never  wash  out  the  stain  of  that  slap. 
Something  that  night,  after  the  lights  were  out, 
stole  into  Hester's  bed. 

"  Hush,  hush  ! "  whispered  Marcia,  taking  her  in 
her  arms.  "  I  've  crept  all  the  way  down  the 
dormitory  on  my  hands  and  knees,  looking  like 
one  of  your  precious  goblins,  just  to  see  you.  You 
poor  dear,  so  you  had  the  slap  she  'd  have  liked  to 
give,  me,  .the  wretch  !  Why  did  n't  you  slap  her 
back  ? " 


124  HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MARKS. 

"  Oh,  Marcia,  Marcia,  you  know  I  deserved  it,  and 
oh,  so  much  more  !  I  was  so  wicked  —  I  —  " 

The  next  moment  something  towered  over  the 
two,  —  a  horrid  spectre  in  spectacles,  —  and  Miss 
Brown  had  seized  Marcia,  and  with  her  clutch  on 
her  shoulder  was  tiptoeing  her  off  to  the  shower- 
bath,  where  presently  she  might  have  been  heard 
ignominiously  gurgling  and  strangling  and  laugh- 
ing and  crying  and  coughing ;  and  she  was  then, 
after  the  swift  rubbing,  given  none  too  gently, 
conducted  back  to  her  bed,  between  the  long 
double  row  of  eager,  anxious  faces  looking  out  from 
the  curtained  alcoves  of  the  little  cots. 

"As  for  you,"  said  Miss  Brown,  standing  with 
a  light  in  her  hand  at  the  foot  of  Hester's  bed, 
"  you  are  an  evil  spirwit  in  this  school !  " 

"  Oh,  Miss  Brown  !  Miss  Brown  !  I  did  n't  mean 
to  be ! "  said  Hester,  who  had  been  sitting  up 
straight  in  bed,  blanched  with  horror  at  every 
fresh  splashing  and  choking  from  Marcia  and  the 
bath-room. 

When  quiet  and  darkness  were  again  restored, 
a  voice  rang  out  clearly  over  the  startled  and 
trembling  dormitory,  — 


HESTER   STANLEY  AT   ST.   MARKS.  125 

"  You  've  punished  me,  Miss  Brown,  and  you  've 
punished  Hester,  in. a  very  outrageous  way.  Now 
we  're  going  to  punish  you.  If  Miss  Marks  knew 
of  your  slapping  Hester  and  half-drowning  me, 
she  'd  turn  you  out  of  this  school  as  quick  as  wink- 
ing. All  those  girls  who  are  more  my  friends 
than  yours  will  do  what  I  wish ;  and  we  shall 
punish  you  by  never  telling  her  a  word  about  it. 
I  don't  envy  you.  Oh,  Miss  Brown  ! " 

And  as  a  simultaneous  groan  burst  from  the 
surrounding  throats  in  the  darkness,  Miss  Brown 
was  really  not  an  object  of  envy.  To  speak  after 
the  lights  were  out  in  the  dormitory  was  open 
rebellion  indeed,  but  it  would  have  done  no  good 
for  Miss  Brown  to  read  the  Riot  Act  itself,  and 
for  the  first  time  in  her  life  she  held  her  peace ;  if 
she  could  be  said  to  have  any  peace. 

"  The  horrid  thing ! "  said  Margaret  Payson  the 
next  day,  when  Miss  Brown  had  unmercifully 
ridiculed  her  equation  on  the  blackboard.  "I 
wish  —  oh,  I  wish  —  I  wish  she  'd  go  a  missionary 
to  the  South  Sea  Islands  ! " 

Hester  heard  her,  and  her  heart  stood  still ;  not 
at  the  sneer  in  Margaret's  words  so  much,  but  at 


126  HESTER   STANLEY  AT   ST.    MAKES. 

the  dreadful  picture  all  at  once  presented  to  her 
imagination,  of  Miss  Brown  in  that  paradise, 
which,  when  all  things  went  adversely  to  her  here, 
seemed  to  her  like  Tennyson's 

"Summer  isles  of  Eden,  lying  in  dark  purple  spheres  of  sea," 
a  place  in  which  to  escape  from  all  her  troubles. 

And  then  she  remembered  that  she  herself  was 
to  be,  if  not  exactly  a  missionary,  yet,  at  any  rate, 
a  teacher  among  those  South  Sea  Islands  —  and 
what  if  she  carried  there  just  such  a  spirit  as  Miss 
Brown's  !  Not  all  Miss  Marks's  angelic  goodness 
had  such  influence  with  Hester  as  that  one  thought. 
And  she  resolved  that,  come  what  might,  she  would 
make  herself  as  unlike  Miss  Brown  as  possible. 

And  yet  how  those  miraculous  mathematics 
rolled  off  the  tips  of  Miss  Brown's  fingers  on  the 
blackboard  !  What  industry  she  had  !  How  faith- 
ful she  was  to  her  work  !  One  should  be  like  her 
in  these  things,  surely,  —  and  how  to  be  like  and 
unlike  Miss  Brown  was  a  difficult  problem  for 
Hester  to  solve. 

But  whether  it  was  right  or  wrong,  like  Miss 
Brown  or  unlike  her,  Hester  could  not  help  griev- 
ing over  Marcia,  who  lay  in  bed  all  that  beautiful 


HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MARKS.  127 

summer  day,  or  stepped  stealthily  round  the  empty 
dormitory,  without  work  or  books,  conscious  how 
badly  her  poor  Eafe  would  feel  if  he  knew  it,  and 
seeing  the  yearly  prize  receding  farther  and  farther 
from  her  grasp  and  going  nearer  to  Charlotte  or 
Bella. 

As  for  Bessy  Byrnes  and  Fanny  Doane  and  the 
undistinguished  rest,  Hester  had,  without  knowing 
it,  such  a  contempt  for  their  calibre  that  it  did 
not  occur  to  her  they  had  eyes  big  enough  to  see  a 
prize,  let  alone  powers  equal  to  the  winning  of  it. 

For  herself,  it  never  once  entered  her  head 
that  she  could  compete  for  it,  —  a  fine  prize,  let 
whoever  would  have  it ;  a  little  gold  watch,  given, 
as  Miss  Marks  said,  not  as  a  piece  of  finery,  but  to 
teach  its  winner  the  value  of  time. 

"  As  if  I  did  n't  know  the  value  of  time  ! "  said 
Marcia,  when,  next  day,  her  term  of  punishment 
having  expired,  they  all  happened  to  be  in  the  gar- 
den talking  of  the  chances  for  the  prize.  "As  if  I 
did  n't  know  the  value  of  time,  with  Charlotte  and 
Bella  abreast  of  me,  and  Margaret  almost  out  of 
sight,  and  I  shut  up  for  twenty-four  hours  with- 
out a  book  or  a  slate  or  anything  but  a  pin  and 


128  HESTEK   STANLEY  AT   ST.    MARKS. 

my  thumb-nail !  Now  I  must  study  all  play- 
time to  make  up  for  it.  The  hatefuluess  of  that 
Brownie ! " 

That  it  could  possibly  be  any  hatefulness  of 
her  own  which  was  at  fault,  Marcia  did  not  hint. 
"  Now  if  you  speak  to  me  for  a  week,"  she  said,  "  I 
shall  take  it  as  a  sign  that  you  don't  want  me  to 
have  the  prize  —  " 

"We  won't,  March!  we  won't,"  cried  half  a 
dozen  voices. 

"  And  if  Margaret  Payson  does  get  that  watch, 
I  shall  just  die  of  envy.  Oh  my,  how  particular 
she  '11  be  about  her  hours  !  We  shall  all  get  the 
time  by  her  second-hand,  and  she  '11  wear  the 
watch  thin  by  taking  it  out  and  putting  it  in  — 
if  she  does  n't  wear  it  as  a  locket !  It 's  bad 
enough  to  have  Charlotte  get  it  —  but  Margaret ! " 

"  What  will  you  do  with  it,  March,  if  you  get 
it  ?  "  asked  Charlotte. 

"  Put  it  away  so  carefully  I  shan't  see  it  more 
than  once  a  year  —  with  my  logic  and  algebra," 
she  said. 

"  Well,  if  I  can't  get  it,  I  hope  you  may.  But 
Margaret  says  she 's  bound  to  have  it,  for  her  aunt 


HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MARKS.  129 

told  her  she  should  n't  have  another  dress  this 
year  if  she  came  home  without  it." 

"Poor  thing!  how  disgracefully  she'll  look! 
She  has  only  about  a  dozen  dresses  now." 

"  Well,  I  'm  bound  to  have  it,  too,  if  I  can  get 
it,"  said  Charlotte.  "  So  look  out,  March  !  " 

"  I  suppose,  young  ladies,"  said  Miss  Park,  whose 
presence  the  girls  had  forgotten  as  she  walked 
up  and  down  the  paths  among  them,  "  that  you 
remember  the  terms  of  this  prize  concerning  which 
you  are  talking  in  such  an  unlovely  manner, — 
that  it  is  not  for  scholarship  alone,  but  for  gen- 
eral personal  excellence  and  improvement  and 
deportment  ? " 

"  No,  I  never !  "  said  Dora  impudently. 

"Then  you  had  better  now,"  said  Miss  Park, 
with  some  severity,  for  her.  "  The  child  who  never 
fails  in  her  primer,  and  has  no  bad  marks  in  her 
deportment,  will  rank  higher  for  the  prize  than  the 
girl  who  fails  every  week  in  her  algebra  and  chem- 
istry. Little  May  Eoberts  may  pass  you  all  yet ! " 

"  Oh,  I  shall  never  get  it  then  ! "  groaned  Marcia. 
"  And  I  should  so  like  to  have  it.  It  would  please 
mamma  so  much,  and  she  is  always  sick,  and 


130  HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MARKS. 

does  n't  have  a  great  deal  to  please  her.  Why 
need  I  be  so  wicked  ?  " 

"  Conundrum,"  said  Charlotte. 

Hester  looked  on  wistfully,  longing  to  do  some- 
thing to  help  Marcia,  and  painfully  aware  of  the 
difference  between  Marcia's  studies  and  her  own 
simple  and  elementary  lessons  that  she  recited 
privately,  for  the  most  part,  to  Miss  Marks  or  to 
Madame  Cherdidi.  The  poor  Madame  was  de- 
lighted to  attend  to  them  for  the  sake  of  hearing 
her  native  tongue  spoken  as  Hester  could  speak  it, 
having  long  had  her  at  her  own  table  to  help  the 
others  who  were  obliged  to  speak  French  there 
during  the  dinner-hour. 

"  Even  you  could  take  a  prize  for  the  French, 
my  dear,"  she  would  say. 

And  Hester  would  reply,  "  I  might  as  well  take 
a  prize  for  rny  breathing." 

But  Hester  used  to  wish  there  were  no  such 
things  as  prizes,  in  those  long  bright  days  when 
Marcia  went  about  with  her  nose  in  a  book,  and 
her  only  really  pleasant  hour  of  the  whole  twenty- 
four  was  the  swimming-hour. 


A  number  of  the  girls  came  dancing  down,  and  happened  to  stop  where  Hester  sat  on  the 
grass  under  the  great  beech-tree."— PAGE  131. 


HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MARKS.  131 


CHAPTER  XL 

A  NUMBER  of  the  girls  came  dancing  down 
-^--*-  in  the  afternoon  recreation,  and  happened 
to  stop  where  Hester  sat  on  the  grass  under  the 
great  beech-tree,  thrumming  on  her  little  guitar 
some  of  the  melancholy  half-tunes  of  her  island 
people's  music. 

"  A  penny  for  your  thoughts,  Hester,"  said  Miss 
Park,  —  who  usually  kept  an  oversight  of  the 
girls  during  that  hour, — coming  round  and  sitting 
down  beside  her,  with  an  open  scrap-book  in  her 
hand. 

"I  was  thinking  of  my  islands,"  said  Hester, 
who  could  not  talk  freely  about  her  father. 

"Do  all  your  islanders  play  on  the  guitar?" 
asked  Marcia,  as  the  girls  threw  themselves  down 
on  the  grass. 

"  Almost  all,  a  little,  this  way." 


132  HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MARKS. 

"  And  do  they  all  swim  as  well  as  you  ?  How 
did  you  happen  to  swim  so,  Hester?"  asked 
Bella. 

"Why,  I  always  did,"  said  Hester.  "They  just 
throw  the  babies  into  the  water,  out  there,  and 
they  —  " 

"  Flop  about  and  swim  away  like  tadpoles,  I 
suppose,"  said  Marcia.  "I  wonder  if  our  baby 
could." 

"  Sometimes  the  women  go  into  the  water  and 
float  with  the  babies  on  their  backs ;  and  the  — 
the  common  people,  when  they  are  washing  the 
clothes,  they  just  bury  the  babies'  feet  in  the 
sand ;  that  keeps  them  safe  and  lets  them  splash 
in  the  water,  —  oh,  it  is  such  beautiful  water ! " 

"  Beautiful  water !  as  if  there  was  any  differ- 
ence ! "  said  Margaret  Payson. 

"  Is  'it  really  more  beautiful  than  this,  Hester  ? " 
asked  Marcia. 

"  Oh,  when  the  sun  falls  into  it,"  cried  Hester, 
with  her  face  aglow,  "  and  the  sea-weed  shines  up 
through  it,  you  would  think  it  was  melted  jewels  ! 
Such  sky-blue  with  a  silver  dust  through  it! 
Such  crimson,  such  pale  green,  such  sparkles  of 


HESTER   STANLEY  AT   ST.   MARKS.  133 

fire  !  Oh,  yes,  too  beautiful  beside  these  still,  dark 
waters  !  But  everything  is  so  much  more  beauti- 
ful out  there,"  said  Hester,  with  a  sigh. 

"Tell  us  all  about  out  there,  Hester.  Mayn't 
she,  Miss  Park  ? "  cried  one  or  two. 

"  Yes,  do  ! " 

"  And  it  will  be  quite  like  a  geography  lecture," 
said  Marcia. 

"  Well,  Hester,"  said  the  gentle  Miss  Park,  "  to 
begin  with,  what  should  we  -see  if  we  suddenly 
found  ourselves  floating  in  the  harbor  of  the  island 
you  came  from  ? " 

"  You  would  see,"  said  Hester  eagerly,  and  with 
a  flush  on  her  cheek,  for  she  had  never  spoken  in 
this  way  of  her  dear  islands  to  any  but  Marcia,  — 
"you  would  see  the  bay,  lying  in  a  long  curve  like 
a  horse-shoe,  and  the  foam  always  flying  high  on 
the  two  points  of  the  curve.  And  all  along  the 
shore  palm-trees  would  be  waving  like  great 
plumes,  and  people  would  be  walking  under  them, 
and  some  of  the  people  would  be  bare  and  brown 
like  Miss  Marks's  statuette  of — of  — 

"  Mercury,"  said  Miss  Park. 

"  And  some  in  long,  flowing  white  gowns ;  and 


134  HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MARKS. 

here  and  there  would  be  white  cottages,  and  here 
and  there  would  be  bamboo  ones,  with  all  the 
sides  rolled  up,  and  half-covered  by  orange  and 
lemon  trees ;  and  back  of  them  would  be  hedges 
full  of  scarlet  pomegranate  flowers ;  and  still  back 
of  them  the  great  green  mountains  with  silver 
threads  of  brooks,  and  cataracts,  and  deep  blue 
valleys  half-way  up  their  sides." 

"  Did  you  ever  go  up  the  valleys  ? "  asked  Miss 
Park. 

"  Oh,  yes  indeed,  many  times,  —  many.  There 
was  a  lovely  cocoa-palm  that  leaned  out  over  one 
of  them,  so  tall,  so  straight,  so  green ;  and  you 
know  before  the  merchants  and  missionaries  went 
there  every  family  had  a  god  —  " 

"  Had  a  god  ! "  said  Margaret. 

"Yes,  a  god  to  worship,  just  as  much  as  it  had 
a  name ;  and  every  child  had  one,  too.  And  when 
a  baby  was  born  it  was  given  a  god  of  some  kind, 
and  sometimes  this  god  lived  in  a  bird,  sometimes 
in  a  snake,  and  sometimes  in  a  flower;  and, 
whatever  it  lived  in,  the  person  whose  god  it  was 
could  not  pick  it  if  it  was  a  flower,  or  eat  it,  or 

hurt  it,   or   that  person   would   change   into   the 

i 


HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.   MARKS.  135 

thing,  —  the  bird,  or  snake,  or  flower,  you  know. 
And  once  there  was  a  lovely  young  girl,  do  you 
believe,  who  picked  a  green  cocoa-nut  —  oh,  they 
are  so  delicious,  all  full  of  soft,  sweet,  cool,  white 
juice,  you  know  —  and  she  was  so  thirsty  —  and 
she  ate  it.  And  her  god  was  in  the  cocoa-nut. 
And  all  at  once  she  felt  stiff,  and  she  could  not 
move;  and  she  began  to  grow  taller  and  taller, 
and  her  hair  began  to  grow  longer  and  longer, 
and  wave  and  wave  —  " 

"  How  perfectly  ridiculous ! "  said  Margaret,  as 
Hester  stood  forgetfully  acting  out  the  tragedy. 

"And  she  changed  into  a  cocoa-palm,"  said 
Hester. 

"  You  don't  believe  it ! "  said  Charlotte  quite 
earnestly.  And  then  all  the  girls,  and  Hester 
too,  laughed  at  her. 

"  I  used  to  believe  it.  I  used  to  love  to  go  up 
there  and  see  her ;  and  once  I  tied  a  ribbon  round 
her  stem." 

"I  should  think  you  believed  it  now,"  said  Mar- 
garet scornfully,  and  as  if,  in  fact,  she  were  a  little 
displeased  that  Hester  should  be  an  object  of  so 
much  interest. 


136  HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.   MARKS. 

"  Don't  mind  her,  don't  mind  her,  Hester,"  said 
Charlotte. 

"And  I  used  to  think  that  Mafuie  really  made 
the  mountains  smoke  when  he  stirred  his  fire," 
continued  Hester,  obeying  Charlotte,  although  her 
cheek  flushed,  "  and  that  he  made  the  earthquakes 
when  he  walked  across  the  island.  I  used  to 
tremble  and  be  frightened  to  sleep  by  Moso's  and 
Sepo's  names,  and  I  would  have  said  my  prayers 
to  the  great  Tangaloa,  as  my  nurse  did,  if  papa 
had  not  found  out  and  sent  me  to  the  nun's 
school,  —  that  is,  whenever  I  would  go." 

"  A  perfect  pagan  !  "^aid  Margaret,  and  not  quite 
under  her  breath  either ;  "  and  I  always  said  so." 

"  It 's  well  to  be  perfect  in  anything ! "  said 
Marcia. 

"  You  'd  better  try  it,  then  ! "  retorted  Margaret. 

"  And  what  did  the  people  do,  Hester  ? "  asked 
Miss  Park  quickly,  to  cover  Margaret's  voice,  if 
she  could. 

"Oh,  they  sang!  They  sang  when  they  were  at 
work,  and  they  sang  when  they  were  at  play,  — 
sing-song,  pleasant  tunes.  They  sing  in  their 
skiffs  in  the  sun  at  sea,  and  they  sing  as  they 


HESTER  STANLEY  AT  ST.  MARKS.     137 

sit  in  the  moonlight  at  home.  There  is  always  a 
loud,  sweet  song  somewhere  to  be  heard.  Oh,  if 
I  could  only  hear  it!"  cried  the  child.  "When 
they  talk,  their  voices  sound  like  songs,"  she- 
added,  pausing  and  looking  far  away,  as  if  she 
were  listening  for  them  now.  "  They  dress  them- 
selves with  flowers,"  continued  Hester,  "the 
women  do;  blossoms  in  their  ears,  necklaces  of 
jasmines,  and  flowers  braided  in  their  hair, — 
flowers  you  never  saw !  Oh,  you  would  like  to 
see  the  dancers  in  the  moonlight;  the  fishers  on  the 
reef  with  the  sun  on  them  ;  the  swimmers  on  the 
sea  with  their  long  hair  floating  on  the  slow  wave; 
the  green  parrots,  the  rosy  flamingoes ;  to  breathe 
the  air,  nothing  but  softness,  nothing  but  sweet 
smells  ;  to  hear  the  low  voices  !  And  they  are  so 
kind,  so  gentle,  oh,  much,  much  kinder  than  the 
people  here  ! " 

"  The  idea !  Those  half-naked  savages ! "  said 
Margaret  again.  Hester  turned  on  her  with  a 
quick  gesture. 

"  Do  they  have  any  books  ? "  asked  Miss  Park 
hurriedly. 

Hester  waited  a  moment,  swallowing  her  wrath. 


138  HESTER   STANLEY  AT   ST.    MARKS. 

"Oh,  yes,"  she  answered  then,  "missionary  books. 
But  they  don't  need  them,"  said  Hester,  with  an 
air;  "for  every  prince,  every  chief,  has  his  Talking 
Man,  and  the  Talking  Man  knows  everything. 
He  is  a  book  of  history  himself,  —  fathers  hand  it 
down  to  sons,  you  see.  I  don't  quite  see  why  papa 
thinks  this  way  is  better.  Certainly  life  is  pleas- 
anter  out  there.  Oh,  I  could  sit  all  night  and  hear 
the  Talking  Men!  They  know  what  makes  the 
days  so  long  in  summer.  For  once,  they  say,  they 
were  shorter,  but  there  was  a  mother  whose  boy 
was  called  the  Child  of  the  Sun,  and  who  grew 
so  strong  that  when  he  found  the  sun  rose  and  set 
so  fast  that  there  was  not  time  enough  to  dry  his 
mat  and  his  mother's,  he  made  up  his  mind  to 
make  the  sun  go  slower.  So  he  climbed  a  tree  in 
the  night,  and  with  a  rope  in  his  hand  waited  for 
his  father ;  and  the  moment  the  great  sun  rose,  the 
boy  threw  his  rope  and  snared  him.  And  then 
the  sun  begged  for  mercy,  but  the  boy  would  not 
let  him  go  till  he  had  his  promise ;  and  ever  since 
then  the  sun  moves  slower,  and  the  days  are 
longer,  —  but  the  sun  burned  all  the  children  of 
that  boy  brown." 


HESTER  STANLEY  AT  ST.  MARKS.      139 

"  .Dear  me  ! "  said  Margaret,  "  what  extraordi- 
narily silly  stories ! " 

"  Do  be  still,  Margaret,  can't  you  ? "  said 
Charlotte. 

"  The  fancies  of  a  primitive  people,"  said  Miss 
Park,  the  peacemaker,  "  are  very  interesting.  You 
see  that  accounts  for  the  color  of  the  islanders." 

"  I  should  think  things  would  have  seemed 
strange  to  you  at  San  Francisco,  Hester." 

"  So  they  did.  The  big  guns,  as  we  came  into 
port,  with  their  great  flashes  of  fire  and  their  bel- 
lowing, echoing  voices,  were  so  different  from  our 
guns  out  there;  the  people  all  in  such  a  hurry; 
and  the  horses,  then  the  horses  ! " 

"Why?" 

"  Why,  I  'd  never  seen  a  horse,  you  know.  And 
most  of  all,  the  gas,  —  to  think  of  turning  a  handle, 
and  fire  spurting  out  of  the  wall !  No,  but  most  of 
all  —  most  of  all  was  snow.  As  we  crossed  the 
mountains,  a  cloud  of  snow,  papa  said  it  was,  came 
and  wrapped  us ;  and  first  I  thought  the  sky  had 
broken  and  come  down,  and  then  I  thought  the 
air  was  full  of  feathers." 

"  And  do  you  want  to  go  back  there  ? "  asked 
Bella, 


140  HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MARKS. 

"  Want  to  go  back  there ! "  cried  Hester.  "  Do 
I  want  to  go  to  heaven  ?  And,  besides,  I  am  to 
teach  them  all  I  learn  here." . 

"  Teach  them  ! "  laughed  Margaret.  "  What  a 
learned  set  they  will  be  ! " 

"  But  do  you  really  think,  Hester,"  said  Miss 
Park,  with  some  hesitation,  on  account  of  Mar- 
garet's rudeness,  "  that  the  story  about  the  Child 
of  the  Sun,  for  instance,  is  better  than  the  real 
knowledge  as  to  why  the  days  are  longer  in 
summer,  that  you  heard  the  girls  in  astronomy 
telling  of  yesterday  ? " 

" No,"  said  Hester.  "No  —  I  don't  suppose  I 
do.  But  it 's  lovely  living,  —  with  no  tasks,  — 
and  all  so  pleasant  — 

"  But  you  don't  think  we  were  made  to  live 
without  tasks,  and  just  for  the  sake  of  the  pleas- 
antness ? "  said  Miss  Park.  "  I  always  think  we 
are  not  to  stay  resting  and  contented,  but  are  to  be 
climbing.  I  always  think  that  we  are  here  to  help 
each  other  up  into  the  light ;  to  learn  all  about 
nature  till  we  know  how  to  make  everything  serve 
us  and  lift  us,  winds  and  waters  and  sun  and  stars  ; 
to  make  life  better  and  easier  for  the  next  that 


HESTER   STANLEY  AT   ST.   MARKS.  141 

come  after  us,  and  the  happy  life  to  come  surer. 
Your  islanders  have  a  very  good  time  certainly, 
but  they  seem  to  me  like  butterflies." 

"  I  've  often  thought  I  should  like  to  be  a  butter- 
fly," said  Marcia,  fearing  facts  bore  too  hardly  on 
Hester. 

"So  has  many  an  idle  schoolgirl  before;  and 
butterflies  are  all  very  well  as  far  as  they  go. 
They  are  objects  of  beauty;  but  there  is  another 
sort  of  beauty,  a  beauty  of  the  soul,  and  it  seems 
to  me  a  chief  end  is  to  make  our  souls  beautiful 
in  God's  eyes.  And  how  can  that  be  if  we  are 
just  enjoying  our  senses,  as  these  gentle  savages 
are,  and  letting  our  souls  and  our  intellects  spindle 
and  wither  ? " 

"Don't  they  ever  fight,  Hester? "  asked  Marcia. 

"  Once  in  a  great  while,"  she  answered,  rather 
loath  to  admit  it.  "  Then  there  is  a  rebellion,  or  a 
little  war,  and  swarms  of  canoes  and  arrows  and 
spears  and  guns.  They  never  take  any  prisoners, 
I  heard  papa  say,  for  they  never  give  any  quarter ; 
but  when  night  comes  they  leave  off,  and  if  they 
are  out  of  ammunition,  the  two  armies  borrow  it 
of  each  other,  —  of  their  enemies,  you  know." 


142  HESTER   STANLEY  AT   ST.    MARKS. 

"  I  should  think  they  were  a  lot  of  children," 
said  Margaret. 

"  Well,"  said  Miss  Park,  "  it  is  natural  that  you 
should  love  your  old  home,  Hester.  Yet  I  think 
the  time  will  come  when  you  will  realize  that 
those  who  know  the  most  concerning  the  king- 
doms and  the  peoples,  those  who  know  the  most 
concerning  the  Creator's  method  in  making  the 
heavens  and  earth,  to  say  nothing  of  those  who 
know  his  true  worship,  have  rendered  themselves 
a  higher  order  of  beings  than  if  they  had  just 
spent  their  lives  dancing  and  singing.  And  if 
to  that  they  add  the  virtues  of  your  islanders 
too,  their  kindness  and  love  and  gentleness,  then 
they  are  most  satisfactory  to  the  heavenly  eyes  as 
rounded  and  perfect  things.  Is  n't  that  so  ?  " 

"All  this  talk,"  muttered  Margaret,  "about  those 
creatures  only  one  remove  from  the  beasts  of  the 
field!" 

Hester's  little  fist  clenched,  after  all  her  long 
forbearance,  and  when  she  opened  her  hand  the 
marks  of  her  nails  were  printed  on  the  palms ; 
but  she  still  took  no  notice  of  Margaret. 

"May  be  it  is,"  she  said,  a  little  ruefully.     "For 


HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MARKS.  143 

papa  thinks  so,  I  believe ;  but  it 's  —  it 's  awfully 
pleasant  down  there  on  the  other  side  of  the 
world." 

"I  have  been  reading  a  little  story  about  it," 
said  Miss  Park,  "  which  I  pasted  into  my  scrap- 
book  ;  and  I  brought  it  with  me,  thinking  some  of 
you  might  like  to  hear  it  — 

"  Oh,  yes,  read  it,  please  read  it,  Miss  Park ! " 
came  a  chorus. 

"  It  is  a  true  story,"  said  Miss  Park.  "The  lady 
who  wrote  it  heard  it  from  the  Prince  Mamea, 
when  he  was  in  this  country  — 

"  Why,  I  know  him  ! "  said  Hester. 

"  Then  you  know  a  noble  gentleman,  if  he  is 
ever  so  dark.  Perhaps  you  know  the  story,  too. 
It  is  called  '  Sae  of  Samoa.' " 

"  Perhaps  so,"  said  Hester ;  "  but  there  are  lots 
of  Saes." 

And  then  Miss  Park  opened  her  book  and  read:  * 

"  Many  clays'  sail  from  the  western  shores  of  our  own 
land  lies  the  land  of  little  Sae,  —  Samoa,  —  a  group  of 
islands,  the  largest  of  which  is  but  little  more  than 
threescore  miles  long  and  a  half-score  broad,  —  islands 
where  the  coral  worm  and  the  volcano  have  wrought 
together,  and  that  sun  and  seas  have  clothed  in  per- 
*From  "  Harper's  Bazar." 


144  HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.   MARKS. 

petual  beauty  and  warmth.  If  any  one  doubts  con- 
cerning this  beauty,  let  him  ship  from  San  Francisco 
on  board  the  stanch  schooner  Petrel,  and  be  on  deck 
some  day,  after  a  month  of  days  has  passed,  and  see  the 
sight  that  greets  him  in  the  long  bend  of  the  shore 
fringed  with  the  feathery  cocoa-palms,  and  backed  by 
the  burnished  shadow  of  the  orange-trees,  thickets  all 
aflame  with  flowers,  white  cottages  and  brown  huts 
here  and  there  along  the  beach,  people  moving  in  the 
shadow  of  the  groves,  these  bare  and  shining,  those  in 
loose  white  linen,  and,  far  back,  the  land  rising  slowly 
with  long  undulations  till  there  are  green  and  woody 
mountains  towering  thousands  of  feet  above  the  sea, 
penetrated  by  lovely  and  inviting  valleys,  with  water 
falling  down  the  steep  in  little  more  than  a  vapor,  but 
flowing  on  and  broadening  till  it  empties  into  the  bay  as 
the  river  Sigago.  Out  into  the  sea,  on  either  side,  wade 
the  great  reefs  where  the  surf  plays  in  snow  and  silver, 
and  around  the  Petrel  the  water  will  be  swarming  with 
dark  shapes  eager  to  get  aboard  with  friendly  words." 

"  Oh,"  cried  Hester,  her  eyes  kindling,  her  face 
wreathed  with  joyous  smiles,  "  that  is  it  exactly  ! 
Oh,  I  wish  you  could  see  it  J  That  is  it  exactly  ! 
Oh,  it  carries  me  back  ! " 

"  But  these  shapes  are  those  of  a  different  order  of 
people  from  little  Sae's;  she  was- a  great  chief's  daugh- 
ter, and  they  are  the  people  of  the  villages  who  do  a 
great  chief's  bidding.  Yet  little  Sae  never  saw  a  vessel 


HESTEll   STANLEY  AT   ST.    MARKS.  145 

coming  into  the  bay,  that  she  did  not  leave  her  play  to 
see  also  if  by  any  chance  her  dear  brother  were  aboard  : 
for  Avia,  her  brother,  was  of  a  roaming  sort,  and  wheth- 
er he  had  run  from  his  lessens,  or  whether  any  sailor 
had  stolen  him  away  in  a  ship,  none  knew,  — sailing 
gods,  the  islanders  used  in  old  times  to  call  those  who 
touched  at  the  place  in  ships.  Almost  everything  was 
sacred  and  a  god  to  some  one  or  other  of  these 
islanders  — ' 

"  You  see,  Margaret ! "  cried  Hester. 

"  Now  you  see,  Margaret ! "  echoed  Bella. 

"Even  the  birds  of  the  air,  into  which  Sae  used 
often  to  wish  she  might  change  and  fly  away  and  find 
Avia.  The  upper  gods  used  to  live  in  birds,  and  if  a 
bird  were  ever  picked  up  dead,  the  whole  island  turned 
out,  weeping  and  wailing,  and,  wrapping  the  bird  in 
finest  mats,  they  buried  it  with  great  lamentation.  It 
was  not  gods  who  had  been  men,  and  who  had  been 
exalted  on  account  of  their  great  deeds,  that  dwelt  in 
birds,  —  they  were  in  fire  and  wind  and  sea. 

"Sae  did  not  care  for  any  of  these  gods.  She  liked 
to  hear  about  them,  as  we  like  to  hear  about  the  fairies. 
She  still  had  a  little  creeping  sensation,  however,  when 
any  one  mentioned  Moso ;  for  Moso  was  a  terrible 
being,  although  no  worse  than  Sepo.  The  first  thing 
that  Sae  had  ever  learned  to  repeat  was  the  old  excla- 
mation of  the  people,  a  frequent  one  to  little  children, 
Aina  oe  a  Sepo  —  May  Sepo  eat  you  !  But  Sae  called 

10 


146  HESTEE   STANLEY  AT    ST.    MARKS. 

herself  a  Christian  child,  and  said  she  believed  in  none 
of  these  things,  although  she  had  really  seen  a  house 
built  by  one  of  the  old  gods,  and  did  not  know  what 
to  make  of  that  — Le  fale  o  Le  Fee  —  The  house  of  Le 
Fee ;  it  was  ten  miles  from  where  she  lived,  built  of 
hewn  stone  laid  with  mortar,  and  Le  Fee,  a  powerful 
god,  who,  when  he  walked,  made  the  earth  tremble  and 
the  trees  droop  and  the  rivers  foam,  built  it  to  show  his 
dominion  over  all  the  train  of  lesser  gods  who  were 
his  slaves,  and  made  these  gods  bring  stone  to  raise  the 
walls  and  coral  to  pave  the  floors,  and  sound  neither 
of  hammer,  axe,  nor  saw  was  heard  while  its  walls 
rose  ;  and  Le  Fee  lounged  and  looked  on,  till  suddenly 
a  greater  god  stood  before  him,  and  challenged  him  to 
combat ;  and,  being  whipped  without  mercy,  Le  Fee 
fled  out  beyond  the  outer  reefs,  and  still  lives  in  the 
storms  of  the  sea.  Sae  thought  it  was  probably  the 
god  she  worshipped  who  conquered  Le  Fee.  Before  her 
father  became  a  Christian,  always  previous  to  the  even- 
ing meal  he  made  an  offering  of  fire  to  all  the  heavenly 
powers  ;  and  when  the  fire  was  lighted,  he  would  say, 
'  This  light  is  for  you,  0  King,  and  gods  superior  and 
inferior!'  sometimes  ending  with  the  words,  'Great 
gods  and  human  gods,  be  not  angry  if  any  are  for- 
gotten ! ' 

"  But  all  this  was  over  now,  and  little  Sae  went 
every  day  to  the  missionary  school.  Before  she  went, 
however,  her  little  black  head,  with  its  beautiful  long 
hair,  was  plastered  thick  with  lime  made  from  the  coral 


HESTER  STANLEY  AT  ST.  MARKS.      147 

reefs,  and  after  a  while  she  went  down  to  the  sea  to 
wash  it  off.  This  was  for  cleanliness  —  " 

"  Yes,  they  all  do  so  !  "  again  interrupted  Hes- 
ter, her  face  still  expressing  her  joy.  "  They  have 
to  do  it,  with  such  thick  hair  as  they  have  under 
such  a  hot  sun." 

"  There  were  people  in  the  bush,  that  is,  in  the  woods 
and  thickets,  whose  hair  was  so  thick  and  coarse  that 
it  stood  out  straight  till  their  heads  were  the  size  of  a 
"bushel  basket.  This  lime  gave  the  hair  a  reddish  tinge 
in  time,  and  although  the  faces  on  the  islands  were  dark, 
there  were  many  people  with  hair  which  was  almost 
golden.  It  was  no  trouble  to  wash  the  lime  off;  for 
from  the  time  that  she  was  born  Sae  had  known  how 
to  swim  in  the  soft  warm  waters  of  the  Pacific  seas. 
The  mothers  and  the  nurses  went  into  the  water  with 
the  babies  on  one  arm  or  sitting  astride  the  neck  — 

"I  told  you  they  did!"  cried  Hester  again 
triumphantly.  " 

"Well,  who  said  they  didn't  ?"  asked  Margaret. 

"  And  the  tiny  creatures,  who  could  neither  walk  nor 
stand  alone,  would  swim  off  like  so  many  little  frogs. 
Thus  the  water  was  just  as  familiar  to  the  children  of 
Samoa  as  the  land ;  and,  as  they  hardly  ever  had  any 
clothes  to  wet,  they  made  nothing  of  diving  in  at  any 
time.  Sae  never  was  so  happy  as  when  she  was  in  the 


148  HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MARKS. 

sea  or  the  river,  whither  she  ran  the  moment  her  few 
lessons  were  over,  not  in  the  least  afraid  of  the  great 
sharks  rolling  outside  the  reef,  but  never  venturing  in- 
side. As  free  in  the  water  as  a  bird  in  the  air,  no  fish 
could  do  anything  that  she  could  not  do,  —  diving  from 
the  cliff,  cutting  through  the  surf,  her  little  brown  body 
slipping  about  beneath  the  surface,  —  and  she  would 
fairly  have  lived  in  it  if  her  mother  had  not  swum  in 
after  her  and,  tucking  her  under  one  arm,  brought  her 
ashore  and  taken  her  over  to  wash  off  the  salt  in  the 
river ;  too  long  a  stay  in  the  water  under  the  burning 
sun  made  the  flesh  swell  and  harden,  till  the  legs 
became  like  an  elephant's.  At  such  times  Sae  envied 
the  babies  of  the  washerwomen,  who,  planted  in  the 
margin  of  the  rivers  so  that  they  could  not  get  away, 
were  left  to  enjoy  themselves.  The  color  of  the  water 
in  the  pools  and  shallows  was  something  that  delighted 
little  Sae's  soul.  In  the  deep  —  " 

"  Oh,  it  is  beautiful !      And  it  seems  as  if  I  were 
there  once  more,  Miss  Park,  while  I  hear  you  ! " 

"  In  the  deep  pools  among  the  hollows  of  the  reefs  the 
gigantic  sea-anemones,  waving  their  tentacles  through 
the  blooming  purples  and  flame-colors,  made  a  change 
with  every  ripple  of  the  tide.  Sae  used  to  fill  these 
hollows,  in  her  imagination,  with  shapes  fit  to  dwell  in 
the  midst  of  such  beauty  — 

"  I  should  think  she  was  you,  Hester,"  laughed 
Marcia,  in  a  half-whisper. 


HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.   MARKS.  149 

"But  as  it  might  have  shocked  the  good  missionaries 
if  she  had  told  of  them,  she  kept  the  secret  to  herself ; 
and  when  tired  of  playing  that  the  lovely  creatures 
were  there,  she  used  to  float  on  the  water  and  watch 
some  fisherman,  standing  far  out  on  the  reef  and  throw- 
ing his  long  bamboo  into  the  surf,  all  bare  and  brown 
and  shining  in  the  sun.  There  were  always  plenty 
of  fish,  of  course,  to  be  had  in  that  place,  and  plenty 
of  everything  else,  in  fact.  Sae  was  very  fond  of  the 
wild  pigeons  that  ate  the  green  nutmegs  till  their  flesh 
was  flavored  with  them;  and  there  were  pigs  and  fowl 
and  game,  and  yams  and  bread-fruit  and  oranges  and 
pomegranates,  pine-apples  and  guavas,  and  almost  every 
fruit  under  heaven  ;  but  best  of  all  she  loved  the  green 
cocoa-nut,  inside  whose  skin  only  a  soft  thin  pulp  had 
gathered,  while  the  rest  was  filled  with  the  cool  deli- 
cious juice  of  the  tree.  Sae's  father  had  many  thousand 
cocoa-nut-trees,  and  as  each  tree  is  thought  to  be  worth 
a  dollar  a  year,  —  oil  being  pressed  from  the  dried  meat 
of  the  nut,  from  which  oil  all  our  nicest  soaps  are 
made,  —  he  would  have  been  a  very  rich  man  had  there 
been  much  money  on  the  islands ;  as  it  was,  he  bar- 
tered his  cocoa-nuts  for  such  things  as  he  needed.  He 
was  a  powerful  chief,  and  had  many  rights,  all  of  which 
he  did  not  exercise ;  as,  for  instance,  if  he  wished  for 
anything  in  the  possession  of  his  inferior,  he  could  take 
it,  and  it  was  no  theft.  If  any  one  caught  a  bonita  in 
the  water,  it  was  brought  to  him  or  to  his  fellow-chiefs ; 
the  common  people  were  not  allowed  to  have  such  a 


150      HESTER  STANLEY  AT  ST.  MARKS. 

delicacy.  Yet  when  these  chiefs  met  any  of  the  com- 
mon people  they  paused  and  chatted  together,  and  for 
the  time  being  were  equals. 

"  .But  the  proudest  possession  of  Sae's  father  was  his 
Talking  Man,  —  not  exactly  a  possession  either,  but  a 
follower,  —  for  the  Talking  Men  were  next  to  the  great 
chiefs  themselves  in  importance.  How  many  times  Sae 
had  Heard  this  Fila-oma  talk  till  it  seemed  to  her  that 
he  made  black  appear  white !  And  she  thought  her 
father's  Talking  Man  vastly  superior  to  the  one  who 
talked  for  Asi's  father.  These  Talking  Men  held  the 
place  of  books,  —  their  memories  being  crammed  with 
facts  and  fancies.  They  knew  how  the  world  first 
came  about,  and  everything  that  had  happened  on  the 
islands  since ;  and  Sae  had  sat  entranced,  listening  to 
the  words  of  the  wise  Fila-oma,  yet  she  could  never 
quite  make  out  why  each  one  had  a  different  story  to 
tell  of  the  same  thing,  —  the  Talking  Man  of  Asi's 
father  declaring  that  the  islands  were  thrown  up  from 
the  deep  sea  by  the  volcanoes,  while  their  own  Talking 
Man  declared  that  here  were  once  great  people  and 
great  kingdoms ;  but  the  ice,  drifting  down  from  the 
north,  had  tipped  up  the  earth  and  drowned  out  the 
old  country,  leaving  nothing  but  the  scattered  spots 
above  water  which  were  the  islands  now;  and  that 
the  old  house  of  Le  Fee,  and  the  paved  road  across  one 
of  the  islands,  were  all  that  was  left  of  the  work  of 
those  peoples  and  those  kingdoms.  Since  the  mission- 
aries had  come,  some  books  had  been  printed  in  the 


HESTEK   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MARKS.  151 

Samoan  tongue ;  Sae  had  learned  to  read  from  a  Bible 
printed  in  Samoan.  It  needed  but  fourteen  letters  to 
print  all  their  words,  and  those  were  but  the  vowels 
and  f,  g,  1,  m,  n,  p,  s,  t,  v,  — in  fact,  to  hear  a  person 
speak  in  the  Samoan  tongue  was  like  hearing  music. 

"To  be  sure,  the  native  Samoan  tunes  were  much 
alike,  and  as  a  rule  the  singers  composed  them  while 
they  sang,  and  the  words  too;  these  singers  sat  in  half- 
circles  in  the  moonlight,  and  whatever  came  under 
their  observation  they  wove  into  the  song.  But  they 
did  not  rely  on  their  own  music ;  their  quick  ears 
caught  all  the  tunes  that  were  going,  from  the  sailors 
of  the  vessels  in  the  harbor,  catching  the  worst  first, 
of  course.  Sae  herself  could  whistle  the  last  organ- 
grinder's  melody  as  well  as  any  little  ragamuffin  of 
our  streets;  but  Asi's  sister,  who  was  taught  in  the 
convent,  could  sing  her  part  in  Mozart's  Twelfth 
Mass  —  " 

"Oh,  I  must  have  heard  her  so  often  and  often  !" 
exclaimed  Hester,  forgetting  everything  but  the 
story.  Then  the  girls  laughed  kindly  at  her  a 
little,  and  Miss  Park  went  on :  — 

.  "The  greater  portion  of  the  people  sang  all  the  time : 
when  they  were  beating  out  the  fibre  for  their  mats 
their  voices  always  rose  in  chorus ;  with  the  first  stroke 
of  the  oar,  when  any  party  of  them  were  in  the  boat, 
the  song  began  again,  and  usually  a  fresh  one,  for  it 


152  HESTER   STANLEY  AT   ST.    MARKS. 

was  almost  impossible  to  speak,  let  alone  to  sing,  in 
the  soft  sweet  language,  without  making  melodious 
rhythm  and  starting  a  new  musical  idea. 

"  But  none  of  these  things  did  Sae  enjoy  now  as  she 
used  when  Avia  was  with  her,  —  neither  the  singing, 
nor  the  dancing,  nor  the  listening  to  the  Talking  Man, 
nor  the  blowing  of  the  pambo  horn,  nor  the  swimming, 
and  not  even  the  polulo-fishing,  where,  on  the  only 
two  days  in  the  year  in  which  the  polulo  appeared, 
crowds  of  boats  put  out  at  daybreak,  full  of  the  wildest 
and  most  lawless  merry-makers,  to  find  the  waters 
thick  and  alive  with  the  polulo,  which,  singing  and 
laughing  and  splashing,  they  fished  up  and  dipped  up 
arid  caught  up  in  great  masses  like  wriggling  worms, 
and  ate,  either  raw  or  baked  in  banana  leaves,  finding 
their  taste  a  little  like  an  oyster  and  a  little  like  a  crab, 
during  all  the  gayest  of  gay  days.  None  of  these 
things  now  pleased  Sae  longer  than  a  few  minutes  at  a 
time.  She  was  always  thinking  how  pleasant  it  Avould 
have  been  if  Avia  had  been  with  her;  and  Asi  was 
nothing  at  all  beside  the  memory  of  Avia.  Avia  used  to 
help  her  everywhere,  and  he  never  had  an  enjoyment 
without  her,  nor  a  pleasure  that  he  did  not  first  divide 
with  her.  For  in  Samoa  the  men  are  always  and  every- 
where, in  private  as  well  as  in  public,  polite  to  the  wo- 
men, allowing  them  to  make  no  exertion  that  they  can 
make  for  them,  insisting  that  they  shall  eat  first,  cook- 
ing for  them  if  there  is  no  inferior  to  do  it ;  and  Avia's 
ambition  led  him  always  to  try  and  do  as  he  had  seen 


HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MARKS.  153 

his  father  do,  —  all  of  which,  of  course,  made  life  very 
agreeable  to  little  Sae.  It  was  partly  this  politeness  of 
the  Samoans,  to  be  sure,  together  with  a  resemblance  to 
the  Latin  of  some  of  their  words,  which  made  many 
of  the  missionaries  doubt  the  statements  of  all  the  Talk- 
ing Men  concerning  the  beginning  of  things  in  Samoa, 
and  wonder  if  in.  those  far-away  early  days,  hundreds 
of  years  ago,  when  the  Portuguese  were  the  sailors  of 
the  world,  some  ship  from  Portugal  to  India  had  not 
blown  far  to  the  east,  and  foundered  on  these  coral 
reefs,  and  peopled  the  land  beyond.,  But  Sae  knew 
nothing  of  all  that;  she  only  knew  some  ship  in 
these  recent  days  had  carried  Avia  away,  and  little  she 
cared  whether  Portugal  or  the  Indies  first  cradled  her 
ancestors.  She  used  to  wonder  where  Avia  was  now, 
and  long  to  know  what  he  could  be  doing,  if  he  had 
enough  to  eat,  if  he  were  wandering  in  some  strange 
land,  —  perhaps  in  a  land  where  they  ate  fat  little  boys, 
as  they  did,  she  knew,  in  Feejee.  Drowned  she  was 
sure  he  never  could  be.  Perhaps  he  was  a  slave  in 
some  foreign  country,  and  he  would  grow  up  to  be  a 
man  and  never  would  be  tattooed.  And  at  that  hor- 
rible thought  Sae  would  burst  into  a  wail  of  sorrow. 
Had  not  Asi's  elder  brother  just  been  tattooed  at  a  cost 
of  some  two  thousand  dollars?  For  it  was  mightily 
expensive,  this  tattooing,  and  the  tattooer  always  made 
sure  of  his  pay  by  demanding  it  in  the  middle  of  the 
operation,  and  if  it  was  not  given  he  ceased  work,  and 
the  young  man  must  thence  go  about  half  tattooed,  the 


154  HESTER   STANLEY  AT   ST.    MARKS. 

derision  of  all  the  world.  And  yet  that  little  mallet 
with  its  teeth  hurt  horridly ;  and  although  a  party 
went  together,  and  but  a  little  was  done  to  each  at  a 
time,  it  was  all  they  could  do  to  endure  it.  It  made 
them  exceedingly  ill,  and  they  had  to  diet,  and  they 
came  out  after  three  months  almost  skeletons,  but 
clothed  in  a  fine  lace-like  tracery  that  covered  their 
glossy  skins  like  silken  cobweb.  And  Asi's  brother 
was  wearing  that,  —  and  Avia  never  would  have  it ! 
l)ay  by  day  it  seemed  more  insupportable  to  Sae  to 
think  of  all  Avia  was  losing  by  his  absence  from  home. 
She  could  not  talk  about  him,  for,  on  account  of  her 
mother,  nobody  mentioned  his  name.  And  at  length 
it  was  more  than  Sae  could  any  longer  bear,  and  she 
determined  to  run  away  to  sea  herself,  with  the  first 
opportunity.  She  was  sure  that  she  could  find  Avia  and 
bring  him  home  with  her. 

"  Opportunity  came  very  soon.  She  had  not  fairly 
turned  the  idea  over  in  her  mind  when  she  saw  a 
schooner  —  the  little  Petrel  indeed  —  getting  ready  to 
pull  up  its  anchor  and  run  up  its  sails ;  and  when 
the  wind  began  to  fill  those  sails,  and  the  Petrel  went 
dipping  and  bending  out  beyond  the  long  Mulinu 
Point,  Sae  was  lying  under  a  bundle  of  old  ropes  and 
sails;  and,  although  nearly  stifled,  she  did  not  dare 
emerge  till  just  as  the  land  was  sinking  on  the  horizon. 
Then  suddenly  she  saw  there  was  no  longer  anything 
but  a  line  —  maybe  the  ghost  of  a  palm-tree  —  of 
her  beloved  Upolu  gleaming  on  the  sea-level.  Apia, 


HESTER   STANLEY  AT   ST.   MARKS.  155 

the  town,  had  vanished,  with  all  the  lovely  curves 
of  the  beach  at  Metantu,  at  Metafele,  and  Mulinu  ;  with 
the  white  houses  of  the  consuls,  the  convent,  and 
the  church ;  with  the  brown  huts,  made  of  reeds  and 
thatched,  the  matting  of  the  lofty  sides  rolled  up  for 
light  and  air ;  the  long  avenues  of  palms,  the  people, 
the  children,  the  dogs,  the  parrots,  and  paroquets,  and 
hawk-billed  pigeons,  —  they  had  all  gone  like  a  dream 
when  one  wakes,  and  Sae  set  up  a  loud  cry  that  be- 
trayed her. 

"Great  was  the  horror  and  amazement  on  the  schooner 
to  find  that  a  native  child  had  been  taken  away,  and 
a  chief's  daughter  at  that.  There  was  no  help  for  it. 
It  was  too  late  to  put  back.  The  captain  swore  at  the 
mate,  and  the  mate  swore  at  the  men,  but  it  was  finally 
decided  to  take  proper  care  of  Sae  and  restore  her  to 
her  people  on  the  next  voyage.  The  little  culprit  stood 
among  them,  trembling  at  her  fate ;  but  they  could  all 
understand  enough  Samoan  to  learn  that  she  had  come 
out  into  the  great  world  in  search  of  Avia,  and  she 
somehow  touched  their  rough  hearts,  and  they  proceed- 
ed to  make  a  pet  of  her,  much  as  if  she  had  been  the 
ship's  monkey.  She  was  not  at  all  afraid  of  them, 
after  a  few  moments,  and  uttered  her  little  Talofa 
alii?  —  " 

" '  How  are  you  ? '  That  is  what  that  means," 
explained  Hester,  trying  not  to  be  just  a  little 
proud. 


156      HESTER  STANLEY  AT  ST.  MARKS. 

"To  every  one  that  came  near  her,  just  as  she  would 
to  a  stranger  on  the  way,  at  home.  In  half  an  hour 
she  had  told  them  confidentially  all  about  herself,  and 
in  another  half -hour  was  deep  in  the  traditions  of  her 
store.  As  she  saw  the  sunset  reddening  the  water,  she 
told  the  watch  the  Fila-oma's  story  of  the  reason  for  it; 
and  when  the  round  moon  swung  up  in  the  balance, 
she  was  telling  about  the  woman  and  her  baby  and  her 
mallet  and  her  board,  that  they  might  see  in  the  moon 
by  looking.  There  was  a  great  famine  in  the  land,  she 
said,  for  a  war  had  ruined  the  cocoa-nuts,  the  yams  had 
not  yet  grown,  the  bread-fruit  was  not  ripe,  and  even 
the  taro  failed.  One  evening,  at  the  shore,  a  woman 
named  Sina  was  beating  out  bark  to  make  mats  and 
tappas,  and  had  set  her  baby  in  the  water,  where  it  was 
too  feeble  even  to  splash.  She  stood  facing  the  east  ; 
and  just  then  the  moon  rose,  round  and  full,  and  to 
her  hungry  eyes  it  looked  like  a  great  immortal  bread- 
fruit. 'Why  don't  you  come  down,'  she  cried  out,  'and 
give  my  baby  a  piece  of  you  to  eat  1 '  At  which  the 
moon,  angry  at  being  taken  for  anything  to  eat,  did 
come  down,  and  took  her  up,  and  there  she  is  to- 
day, baby  and  board  and  mallet  and  all,  as  anybody 
can  see.  Of  course  the  sailors  were  delighted  with 
this  little  story-teller,  and  would  have  kept  her  telling 
stories  forever,  but  for  an  incident  that  happened 
presently. 

"  This  petting  of  theirs,  as  you  may  suppose,  was 
very  pleasant  to  little  Sae,  but  none  of  it  soothed  the 


HESTER   STANLEY    AT   ST.   MARKS.  157 

pain  that  now  burned  at  her  heart  as  she  looked  out 
over  the  waste  of  waters  and  saw  that  she  had  lost 
all  the  rest,  and  had  not  found  Avia.  In  spite  of  her 
desire  to  find  Avia,  she  began  to  feel  a  great  dread  of 
the  unknown  country  to  which  she  was  hastening. 
She  thought  of  her  poor  mother,  who  by  this  time  had 
missed  her  also,  and  was  wandering  about  in  trouble ; 
she  thought  of  her  tall  sister,  who  was  learning  all  the 
things  that  now  perhaps  she  would  never  learn,  study- 
ing -at  the  mission-school  books  that  told  her  of  £he 
great  happenings  on  the  wide  earth ;  she  thought  of 
the  dancers  gathering  in  the  squares,  the  swaying  fig- 
ures of  the  girls,  the  voices  of  the  singers  on  this 
moonlight  night,  —  on  the  dark  nights  none  ventured 
from  the  door  except  by  twos  and  threes ;  she  thought 
of  the  way  in  which  her  people  were  wont  to  turn 
night  into  day,  of  the  young  girls  clothed  in  flowers, 
with  wreaths  and  garlands  and  necklaces  and  plaited 
scarfs  of  the  splendid  blossoms  of  the  islands  wound 
about  them,  beautiful  objects,  delightful  to  the  eye  ; 
she  thought  of  the  gayety  when  a  whole  village  rose 
to  go  and  visit  another  village  that  came  out  to  meet 
them  and  received  them  with  songs  and  dances  and 
banquets,  when  the  visit  was  finished  the  people  pass- 
ing to  the  next  village,  which  received  them  in  the 
same  joyous  way,  entertaining  them  for  days,  till  they 
again  passed  on,  going  thus*  till  they  had  made  the 
tour  of  the  islands,  sometimes  taking  a  year  to  do  it, 
and  by  the  time  they  returned  to  their  own  place,  an- 


158  HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MARKS. 

other  village  coming  to  visit  them  in  this  life  of  per- 
petual festivity,  flowers,  and  song,  and  warmth.  With 
every  wave  over  which  the  vessel  bounded,  Sae  felt 
that  she  was  going  farther  and  farther  from  all  the  joy 
of  the  earth." 

"  Oh,  I  know  just  how  she  felt !  "  said  Hester, 
with  tears  in  her  eyes. 

"All  at  once,  as  she  sat  there  sorrowing,  the  cry 
came,  '  Ship  ahoy ! '  arid,  swinging  round  to  the  other 
point  of  her  compass,  Sae  became  alive  with  interest 
and  curiosity  in  the  manoeuvres  of  ropes  and  sails  and 
the  lowering  of  a  boat.  It  was  late  ;  the  moon  was 
riding  large  and  full,  —  the  refulgent  moon  of  the  trop- 
ics; you  could  have  seen  every  ripple  on  the  water, 
every  bubble  of  the  foam  in  the  wake  of  the  boats  that 
drew  together  from  the  two  vessels,  every  black  line  of 
cordage,  sparkling  with  dew,  of  the  ship  that  had  been 
blown  by  a  storm  a  good  way  off  her  course,  and  that 
now  lingered  but  a  moment  while  her  boat  went  out  to 
meet  the  Petrel's  boat,  and  send  to  her  owners  in  Amer- 
ica word  of  her  master's  death.  While  the  boats  were 
approaching  each  other  the  mate  of  the  Petrel  was  look- 
ing through  the  captain's  glass,  and,  partly  in  idleness, 
partly  in  play,  —  for  there  was  not  the  strictest  disci- 
pline on  the  little  schooner,  where  half  the  men  were 
owners  themselves,  —  he  held  the  glass  to  Sae's  eye  as 
she  hovered  near  him.  At  first  she  could  see  nothing 
but  a  dark  blur,  a  gray  haze,  when  suddenly  started  up 


HESTER   STANLEY  AT   ST.   MARKS.  159 

a  part  of  the  great  ship  before  her  eyes,  with  every  line 
distinct,  and  then  the  glass  swung  a  little  as  the  vessel 
rolled,  and  the  boat,  with  its  flashing  oars  and  every 
face  of  every  soul  within  her,  for  just  one  instant  hung 
painted  on  the  field  of  sight.  There  was  a  wild  cry 
ringing  over  the  deck  of  the  Petrel.  '  Avia  !  Avia ! ' 
And  in  the  next  breath  came  a  rush,  a  dash,  and 
the  little  dusky  figure  had  bounded  overboard  into 
the  water,  had  come  to  the  top,  and  was  putting  out 
swift  as  a  bonita  and  dark  as  a  cuttle-fish.  Then  she 
was  in  the  moonlight;  the  phosphorescent  water  glit- 
tered about  her;  her  little  dark  body  shone  with  silver 
lines  while  she  seemed  to  rise  from  a  hollow  and  spring 
into  the  next  surge,  as  a  child  springs  into  its  mother's 
bosom.  In  that  one  moment  Sae  had  seen  Avia's  face 
in  the  bow  of  the  boat,  and  comprehended  that  he  was 
perhaps  returning  to  the  Samoa  which  she  was  leaving. 
What  was  the  water  to  her  more  than  the  air?  Did  she 
not  almost  live  in  it  1  Afraid  of  those  lazily  rolling 
waves?  She  would  be  a  poor  islander  if,  by  dint  of 
swimming  and  shouting,  she  could  not  get  on  board  of 
the  ship  that  carried  Avia,  and  that  doubtless  meant  to 
touch  at  the  Samoan  Islands  before  winging  its  farther 
way!  Nor  was  the  thought  of  any  awful  sea-monster 
able  to  terrify  her,  —  that  would  be  the  most  cruel  and 
awful  of  possible  monsters  which  could  keep  her  from 
Avia.  And  if  she  failed  to  reach  him  —  that  did  not 
once  occur  to  Sae. 

"  For  a  moment  every  one  on  board  the  Petrel  was 
paralyzed;   and  then  another  boat  was  launched  and 


160  HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MARKS. 

manned  and  was  following  the  child  with  mighty  strokes. 
She  was  clinging  to  the  gunwale  of  that  boat,  when 
both  the  others,  not  understanding  the  new  movement, 
came  toward  it  over  the  long  roller.  There  was  a  brief 
interval  of  wild  terror  for  the  child,  lest  Avia's  boat  were 
returning  to  the  ship  without  her,  — the  ship  that  seemed 
hanging  back  only  like  some  impatient  charger,  —  and 
then  that  too  had  come  alongside.  There  were  hurried 
words  and  cries.  '  Oh,  Avia !  it  is  Sae  !  it  is  Sae  ! '  she 
was  exclaiming,  in  the  sweet  Samoan  ;  and  while  she 
said  it  she  was  being  drawn  over  the  side,  and  she  was 
sobbing  in  Avia's  arms  as  the  boats  parted.  She  slept, 
still  sobbing  in  her  dreams,  in  his  little  brown  arms 
that  night,  as  the  great  ship  sped  on  to  touch  at  the 
Happy  Islands,  and  on  the  next  morning  the  two  little 
runaways  together  were  sobbing  in  the  arms  of  their 
mother." 

"Oh,  Miss  Park!  dear  Miss  Park!"  Hester  ex- 
claimed, as  the  young  teacher  closed  the  book, 
"you  have  made  me  so  happy!  I  feel  as  if  I  had 
been  at  home  again  ! " 

And  here  the  bell  rang  for  them  to  come  in,  be- 
fore the  study  hour  began,  and  be  treated  to  cake 
and  ice-cream,  in  honor  of  Miss  Marks's  birthday ; 
and  Hester,  with  all  her  other  learning,  learned 
how  ice-cream  tastes,  after  all. 


HESTER  STANLEY  AT  ST.  MARKS.     161 


CHAPTER  XII. 

TTESTER  sat  on  the  bank,  the  afternoon 
~* — *-  following  the  lecture  on  the  South  Sea 
geography,  as  Marcia  called  it,  waiting  for  the 
tide  and  her  swimming-class  together.  She  was 
sad ;  for  she  was  thinking  of  her  father,  and  won- 
dering over  the  possibilities  concerning  him, — 
whether  he  had  not  reached  home  at  all ;  whether 
he  had  written,  and  the  ship  carrying  the  letter 
had  never  come  to  port ;  whether  he  had  himself 
been  wrecked,  and  was  lying  —  oh,  dreadful 
thought !  —  at  the  bottom  of  the  sea,  or  were  cast 
away  on  some  barren  reef,  half  starved,  and  sig- 
nalling every  passing  sail;  whether,  indeed,  he 
could  have  forgotten  his  little  girl  in  her  home- 
sickness. 

Somehow : —  and  she  felt  as  if  it  were  very  self- 
ish —  that  last  was  as  bad  a  thought  as  any,  and 
Hester's   tears   fell   fast  over  her  fingers,  as  she 
11 


162  HESTER   STANLEY  AT   ST.    MAKES. 

absently  picked  the  pebbles.  Her  dear  father,  — 
no,  she  knew  he  never  could  have  forgotten  her. 
How  tender  he  had  always  been  with  her ;  how  he 
had  had  to  be  father  and  mother,  too ;  how  many 
nights  had  she  gone  to  sleep  in  his  arms,  lulled 
by  the  soft  sound  of  the  sea  on  the  reefs ;  how 
kind  were  his  tones,  how  she  loved  them,  how 
she  longed  to  hear  them  !  What  had  he  ever  re- 
fused her  ?  What  had  he  seemed  to  think  of  or  to 
live  for  but  her  happiness  ? 

And  he  had  left  his  business,  and  given  up  her 
company,  and  brought  her  here  over  sea  and  con- 
tinent, that  she  might  not  grow  up  like  the  little 
islanders,  but  might  have,  as  other  Christian  chil- 
dren have,  the  benefit  of  all  the  world's  enlighten- 
ment. And  if  now  he  were  gone,  what  was  there 
she  could  ever  do  for  him  in  return?  And  then 
the  tears  came  faster. 

Only  one  thing  could  she  do  !  She  knew  what  a 
happy  dream  of  his  it  had  been  that  the  islanders, 
whom  she  loved  so,  out  there  on  the  summer  seas, 
should  become  as  thoroughly  civilized  and  edu- 
cated as  American  and  European  people  are ;  and 
only  those  who  cared  for  them  would  make  the 


HESTER   STANLEY  AT   ST.    MARKS.  163 

effort  to  bring  that  about ;  and  she  would  spare  no 
pains  to  learn  all  she  could  be  taught  in  order  to 
teach  it  in  her  turn  to  the  islanders,  for  his  sake, 
if  for  no  other  reason. 

But  the  voices  of  the  girls,  led  by  Miss  Park, 
disturbed  her  reverie;  and  Hester,  watching  the 
water  a  little  while,  presently  slipped  away  into  it, 
followed  by  Marcia  and  all  her  young  nymphs. 

"  Say,  Hester,"  whispered  Marcia  in  her  ear,  ris- 
ing and  shaking  the  water  out  of  her  red  locks, 
"  will  you  take  your  revenge  on  Peggy  Pay  son  now  ? 
Let  me  pull  her  down  by  her  heels  and  frighten 
her  out  of  her  wits.  We  '11  have  no  more  of  her 
'  imperence,'  I  guess." 

For  answer,  Hester  pulled  Marcia  herself  under, 
and  they  went  shooting  beneath  the  water  like  a 
couple  of  young  naiads,  and  came  to  the  top  blow- 
ing like  a  couple  of  young  porpoises. 

"How  do  you  like  it  yourself?"  cried  Hester 
gleefully.  And  then  she  swam  back  to  show  the 
girls,  who  were  still  floundering  about  near  the 
shore,  how  to  make  their  strokes  more  gracefully, 
and  so  lend  their  bodies  to  the  water  that,  while 
they  really  ruled  the  waves  it  should  seem  as  if  the 


164  HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MARKS. 

wave  ruled  them,  as  it  rules  the  long  ribbons  of 
the  sea-weed. 

"  What  in  the  world  is  the  matter  with  Brownie  ?" 
cried  Marcia,  dashing  the  water  from  her  eyes  as 
she  rose  beside  her  again  with  Bella,  —  for  Marcia 
had  helped  to  make  Bella  quite  expert.  "  Look  at 
her,  the  absurd  thing ! "  And,  to  the  admiration 
of  the  girls,  Hester  stood  up  in  the  water  a  minute 
to  look  at  Miss  Brown,  who  was  on  the  bank,  slap- 
ping the  palm  of  one  hand  with  a  letter  which  she 
held  in  the  other,  while  Miss  Park  was  calling 
Hester's  name. 

"Oh,"  cried  Hester,  scattering  the  water  in  all 
directions,  "  she  has  a  letter  for  me !  It  is  a  let- 
ter from  papa,  a  letter  from  papa ! " 

"Hester's  heard  from  her  father!"  cried  Bella, 
with  her  mouth  full  of  water. 

"  Oh  Hester,  I  'm  so  glad ! "  exclaimed  Marcia. 

From  whom  else  could  the  letter  be?  Hester 
forgot  all  about  the  swimming-lesson,  and  pushed 
her  way  eagerly  towards  Miss  Brown. 

"I  don't  suppose  she  can  wead  it,"  said  Miss 
Brown  to  Miss  Park,  "  any  more  than  the  learned 
seal ; "  for  Hester's  little  black  head,  sleek  with  the 


HESTER   STANLEY  AT   ST.   MARKS.  165 

water,  suggested  the  comparison.  "  And  the  hand- 
witing  of  the  superscwiption  looks  as  if  a  fly  had 
cvvept  out  of  the  inkstand  and  cwawled  over  the 
paper." 

"Don't  talk  so,  Miss  Brown,"  cried  Hester 
rather  imperiously, — she  could  not  stamp  her  foot 
in  the  water,  —  "don't  talk  so  about  my  father's 
letter ! " 

"  I  shall  talk  as  I  please ! "  exclaimed  Miss 
Brown.  "  And  as  to  the  letter,  I  don't  know  from 
whom  it  is,  and  I  don't  know  whether  you've  a 
wight  to  it  or  not,"  as  Hester  hurried  up  the  shore 
in  her  long,  clinging  gown.  "  You  've  a  gweat 
many  demerwits  on  my  book.  And  I  didn't 
bwing  it  down  to  give  to  her  either,  —  I  thought 
Miss  Marks  was  here,"  she  said  to  Miss  Park. 

"  It  does  n't  make  any  difference  who  is  here ! 
My  letter  belongs  to  me  ! " 

"  Well,  let 's  see  you  get  it,"  said  Miss  Brown, 
more  and  more  angry,  as  usual. 

"  Oh,  Miss  Brown,  it 's  from  my  father ! "  cried 
Hester.  "I  must  have  it!" 

"  Must,  miss  ?  I  've  a  gweat  mind  not  to  give  it 
to  you  at  all,  with  your  '  must '  to  me ! " 


166  HESTER   STANLEY  AT   ST.    MARKS. 

"  Shame  !  shame  ! "  broke  from  half  the  throats 
of  the  swimming-class  in  a  safe  chorus,  only  to 
make  matters  worse. 

"  Oh,  Miss  Brown  ! "  cried  Hester  breathlessly, 
and  clasping  her  hands,  "  it  can't  be  right  for  you 
to  keep  it  from  me !  I  know  Miss  Marks  would 
give  it  to  me  ! " 

"  Take  it,  then  ! "  said  Miss  Brown ;  and  with 
some  force  she  gave  it  a  flirt  towards  Hester.  "  I 
don't  imagine  it's  from  your  father,  at  all.  It's 
not  like  his  witing  in  the  visiting-book,  any  way  ! " 

And  then,  just  as  Hester  would  have  laid  hands 
on  the  letter,  the  gentle  evening  breeze  was  before 
her,  and  caught  it  and  fluttered  off  with  it  and  let 
it  gently  down  upon  the  water,  out  of  reach  of  the 
girls,  who  went  good-naturedly  but  too  officiously 
splashing  and  splattering  after  it. 

"  I  should  just  like  to  know  how  Miss  Brown  is 
going  to  explain  that  to  the  principal ! "  said  Bella. 
But  Hester  did  not  waste  a  thought  on  Miss 
Brown ;  she  was  in  the  water  in  an  instant,  diving 
in  order  to  come  up  where  the  letter  was ;  but 
when  she  rose  the  letter  was  not  there,  —  one 
little  wave  had  washed  it  to  another,  and,  wet 


HESTER   STANLEY  AT   ST.    MARKS.  167 

with  all  the  commotion  that  the  girls  made,  it  had 
gone  into  the  deeper  water,  and,  in  spite  of  all  her 
swimming  about  and  diving  in  search  of  it,  the 
letter  never  reappeared. 

"  Oh  !  oh ! "  she  exclaimed,  wringing  her  hands, 
and  coming  up  the  shore  at  last,  tired  out  as  the 
twilight  bell  sounded.  "  I  feel  as  if  I  had  lost  my 
father  !  She  said  it  was  n't  his  writing,  —  it  may 
have  been  to  tell  me  I  had  lost  him.  And  now  I 
never,  never  shall  know  ! "  And  she  sat  down  on 
the  sand  in  her  wet  gown,  with  her  knees  drawn 
up  and  her  head  bowed  on  them,  crying  as  if  she 
had  broken  her  heart.  "  After  all  these  months  !  " 
she  said,  —  "  these  long,  long  months  !  And  I  was 
trying  to  be  so  good !  Oh,  papa  !  oh,  my  dear,  my 
dear ! "  And  here  two  strong  arms  closed  about  her, 
—  for  Marcia,  the  moment  that  the  search  for  the 
letter  was  abandoned,  had  run  up  to  headquarters 
to  report  the  case, —  and  Miss  Marks  was  carrying 
her  away  to  her  own  room,  and  consoling  her  as 
only  love  can  console  the  grieving. 


168  HESTER   STANLEY  AT   ST.   MARKS. 


CHAPTEK  XIII. 

"  ~|    TUSH,  now,  Hester  ! "  said  Marcia.    "  I  did  n't 

^ — L  mean  you  should  know  anything  about  it ; 
and  you  never  would,  if  your  eyes  were  n't  every- 
where at  once,  like  the  old  woman's  hens  ! " 

"  I  could  n't  think  why  you  and  Bella  were  braid- 
ing your  hair  so  finely.  I  can  make  lovely  plaits, 
—  like  our  island  women's  plaits ! " 

"  Oh,  do,  Hester,  do  !  Oh,  if  you  will,  Hester, 
I  '11  tell  you  all  about  it.  I  '11  tell  you  the  greatest 
secret,  —  only  you  must  promise  never,  never  to 
betray  us." 

"  Of  course  I  never  will !  "  answered  Hester  in- 
dignantly. 

"  Solemn  true,  black  and  blue  ?  " 

"  Upon  my  word  and  honor  !  " 

"Well,  then,  Bella  and  Charlotte  and  I,  after 
every  one 's  asleep  to-night,  are  going  to  get  out  of 


HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MARKS.  169 

5 

the  windows  in  our  bathing-suits  — there  's  a  splen- 
did moon  —  and  swim  out  to  the  Long  Point.  And 
Joe  and  Paul  are  going  to  row  over  from  the  par- 
son's place,  —  they've  bribed  the  under-gardener. 
Joe  put  a  note  in  my  hand  as  we  were  coming  out 
of  church  yesterday.  What  do  you  think  of  that  ? " 

"  Why,  you'll  get  your  death  o'  cold! "  cried  Hes- 
ter, without  any  thought  just  then  as  to  the  im- 
propriety of  the  thing,  first  and  last,  in  church  or 
out  of  it. 

"  Oh,  no,  we  shan't.     The  water 's  as  warm  ! " 

"  But  it 's  dangerous.  There 's  a  great  current 
round  the  Long  Point,  you  know  —  " 

"  Oh,  you  go  away  !  " 

"  And  such  an  undertow  !  " 

"  Nonsense  !  We  '11  leave  the  water,  and  be 
upon  the  sand  and  climbing  across  the  ledge,  be- 
fore we  get  where  the  current  is." 

"  I  don't  believe  any  of  you  can  swim  quite  well 
enough." 

"  Don't  you  ! " 

"  But  if  you  should  be  drowned,  —  oh,  Marcia  ! 
if  you  should  be  drowned,  what  should  I  do  ? " 
cried  Hester,  "  and  what  would  all  your  children 


170  HESTER   STANLEY    AT   ST.    MARKS. 

I 

do  at  home  ?  Your  mother  would  have  so  much 
trouble,  and  the  little  baby  — 

"  Oh,  Hester,"  said  Marcia,  turning  the  subject, 
"  do  you  know  what  they  're  going  to  name  the 
baby?  I  forgot  to  tell  you.  They're  going  to 
name  it  Hester !  I  only  heard  to-day." 

Then  Hester  had  to  laugh,  and  then  to  cry  a 
little  on  Marcia's  neck,  arid  then  they  had  to  talk 
the  baby  over,  and  Hester  tried  not  to  let  two 
little  red  spots  on  her  cheeks  betray  her  pride  and 
pleasure.  But  for  all  that  she  presently  returned 
to  the  charge.  "  But,  Marcia,"  she  urged,  "  Miss 
Marks  would  n't  let  you  swim  out." 

"  Of  course  she  would  n't,  you  little  ninny  !  Do 
you  suppose  we  're  going  to  ask  her  ? " 

"  And  it 's  against  the  rules  ! " 

"There  aren't  any  rules  about  it.  'Twas  an 
offence  never  contemplated,  as  Miss  Marks  says  of 
parricides  and  Lycurgus." 

"  But  you  know  it's  wrong." 

"Now,  will  you  just  tell  me  what  there  is  wrong 
about  it,  Hester  Stanley  ? "  said  Marcia. 

"It  must  be  wrong  if  Miss  Marks  wouldn't  let 
you  do  it,"  said  Hester,  with  the  red  on  her  dark 
cheek.  "  Please,  don't,  Marcia." 


HESTER   STANLEY  AT   ST.    MAEKS.  171 

"  I  shall !     So  there  !  " 

"Well,  I'm  sorry  you  told  me  the  secret  —  " 

"  You  're  not  going  to  tell  of  us  now,  Hester  ? " 

"No;  I  promised.  But  —  but  —  I  can't  plait 
your  hair  for  that.  You  know  I  can't." 

"  Well,  I  don't  suppose  Joe  and  Paul  will  look 
at  our  hair  much ;  the  less  they  look  at  my  gory 
locks  the  more  I  '11  like  it.  Won't  it  be  larks,  — 
ohj  such  larks  ! " 

"  Don't  you  really  think  you  'd  better  think  bet- 
ter —  " 

"  What  queer  language,  Hester  ! "  said  Marcia, 
with  dignity.  "-'  Better  think  better.'  It  may  be 
the  Polynesian  tongue  —  " 

"  It  is  the  English  tongue.  And  you  should  n't 
talk  so  to  me,  Marcia.  And  there  are  almost  as 
many  Polynesian  tongues  as  there  are  Polynesian 
islands." 

"Well,  there,  you  dear  little  thing,  I  won't. 
And  don't  you  bother!  Just  as  like  as  not  we 
shan't  go,  after  all."  And  Marcia  began  to  figure 
away  on  her  slate  again.  "  I  wonder  if  Margaret 
Payson  can  demonstrate  that  horrid  problem  yet. 
/  can't,  "  she  said  presently.  "Heigh-ho  !  Thank 


172  HESTER   STANLEY  AT   ST.    MARKS. 

goodness,  it 's  most  dark.  See  —  look  there,  now  ! 
I  wonder  if  Brownie  's  been  outside  that  window 
all  this  time." 

Hester  was  not  quieted  by  Marcia's  "  Just  as 
like  as  not."  Yet,  having  resolved  not  to  shut 
her  eyes  after  the  dormitory  lights  were  out,  but 
to  rise  and  follow  the  girls  in  their  naughty  esca- 
pade, that  she  might  be  near  in  case  they  met  with 
any  danger,  she  fell  asleep  immediately  on  touching 
her  pillow,  —  that  is,  as  soon  as  she  had  said  a 
prayer  for  her  little  Hester  Meyer,  —  and  was  only 
awakened,  by  the  moon  on  her  face,  to  a  vivid 
sense  that  they  must  have  gone  long  ago. 

A  stealthy  exploration  assured  her  that  the  three 
beds  were  indeed  vacant.  Without  a  second  thought 
she  crept  down  the  stairs  as  she  was,  fearing  at 
every  step  —  and  never  did  the  stairs  creak  so  — 
that  she  would  hear  Miss  Brown's  awful  voice. 
Then  she  let  herself  out  a  lower  window,  ran  down 
the  terraces  and  the  garden  and  along  the  sand 
as  fast  as  she  could  scamper,  a  little  awed  by  the 
cold  white  moonlight  and  by  the  unreal  shadows 
of  all  things  as  she  ran. 

Once  or  twice  her  heart  failed  her.     She  thought 


HESTER   STANLEY  AT   ST.    MARKS.  173 

of  the  other  girls  asleep  in  the  still,  soft  beds,  with 
the  moonlight  on  the  window-panes,  and  she  had 
half  the  mind  to  go  back.  She  felt  as  though  she 
were  all  alone  in  the  world  except  for  the  uncouth 
shapes  of  the  rocks  at  one  side,  with  the  weird 
white  moonlight  on  the  lonely  sand,  and  the  dark 
water  always  curling  in-shore.  And  then  she 
thought  of  Marcia  getting  into  that  undertow,  and 
ran  on.  "  Oh,  it 's  so  awfully  dangerous  ! "  she 
kept  saying  to  herself.  "  How  could  they  plan  to 
do  it  ? " 

The  moon  went  under  a  cloud.  How  dismal, 
how  desolate,  it  was  then !  She  cried  as  she  sped 
along.  She  was  not  really  afraid  either  of  shore  or 
sea,  for  if  she  came  to  water  through  which  she 
could  not  wade,  why,  then  she  could  swim ;  but  it 
seemed  as  if  she  were  travelling  through  some  dis- 
mal part  of  "  Pilgrim's  Progress,"  that  Miss  Marks 
had  given  her  to  read,  after  she  had  told  about 
Eafe's  reading  it  to  the  children.  She  had- no  right 
here,  she  was  breaking  the  rules ;  but  how  could 
she  break  her  promise  not  to  tell,  and  how  could 
she  leave  Marcia  to  her  fate  ?  And  then,  when  a 
person  has  a  baby  named  for  her,  a  person  must 
be  brave  and  strong. 


174  HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MARKS. 

She  left  off  crying  and  began  saying  a  short 
prayer  of  her  father's.  Then  all  at  once  it  seemed 
to  her  as  if  sky  and  sea  and  shore  were  full 
of  the  great  Protecting  Power,  and  she  were  safe 
as  if  lying  in  her  little  bed.  Presently  she  had 
passed  the  boundaries  of  the  shallow  swimming- 
cove  and  its  skirting  line  of  rocks,  and  she 
must  either  climb  and  work  her  way  across  the 
great  semicircle  of  the  long  ledge  full  of  black 
cracks  into  the  bowels  of  the  earth,  for  all  she 
knew,  or  choose  the  shorter  way  by  swimming 
across  to  the  Point ;  and  she  took  the  deep  water 
and  swam  boldly  out,  sure  of  herself,  but  very 
doubtful  concerning  her  wrong-headed  pupils,  whom 
she  half  feared  to  find  drowned  and  floating  before 
her. 

It  was  only  a  little  way,  after  all ;  but  after  a 
couple  of  rods  she  felt  as  though  the  current 
would  be  growing  stronger  than  herself,  —  the 
water  was  not  like  the  soft  currents  that  played 
round  her  islands,  —  and  she  turned  and  made  for 
the  rocks,  having  swum  but  a  few  boat-lengths, 
and  clambered  up  them,  palpitating,  and  wondering 
over  the  fate  of  the  girls,  and  hardly  daring  to 


HESTER   STANLEY  AT   ST.   MARKS.  175 

hope  that  they  had  done  just  as  she  had,  and  were 
now  sitting  with  Joe  and  Paul  cooking  clains  at 
a  blazing  driftwood  fire  on  the  other  side  of  the 
Long  Point. 

"  Oh  Marcia,  Marcia  ! "  cried  the  little  dripping 
figure,  climbing  the  rocks  in  the  moonlight  and 
gaining  the  top  of  the  bluff,  "where  are  you? 
where  are  you  ?  I  don't  dare  to  call !  Oh,  what 
ever  made  me  love  you  so  ? " 

As  well  as  she  could,  for  the  uneven  surface 
and  its  fissures,  she  ran  along  the  top  of  the  low 
bluff  that  at  its  extreme  point  ended  in  a  sheer 
straight  rock  over  which  the  waves  washed  in 
angry  weather,  although  now,  some  six  or  eight 
feet  below,  they  slept  peacefully  as  any  unruffled 
inland  lake. 

As  she  stood  for  a  moment  in  the  light  on  the 
extreme  seaward  part  of  the  bluff,  trying  to  wring 
out  a  little  of  the  water  that  made  her  single 
garment  so  heavy,  something  that  had  been  crouch- 
ing in  the  shadow  rose  beside  her  so  suddenly  that 
she  cried  out  and  started  back,  and  Miss  Brown  — 
who  had  been  lying  on  her  face  peering  over  the 
side  of  the  bluff  that  looked  down  on  the  sandy 


176  HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MARKS. 

shore  where  Joe  and  Paul,  with  Marcia  and  Bella 
and  Charlotte,  were  roasting  their  clams,  the  serv- 
ing-man whom  they  had  bribed  sitting  at  a  little 
distance  —  threw  herself  forward  to  catch  the 
startled  child ;  and  crying,  "  Aha,  miss  !  So  I  've 
got  you,  at  any  wate ! "  lost  her  balance,  tottered, 
and  fell  with  a  wild  scream  into  the  sea. 

A  second  passed.  No,  the  tenth  part  of  a 
second,  —  but  it  seemed  like  an  eternity  to  Hester. 
It  was  Miss  Brown,  the  hateful,  horrid,  unaccount- 
able Miss  Brown,  who  had  pursued  her  with  anger 
and  spite,  who  made  her  life  wretched,  who  had 
lost  her  father's  letter,  who  was  her  bitter  enemy, 
—  what  should  she  do  ? 

There  was  only  one  thing  to  do.  And  in  an- 
other heart-beat  Hester,  with  a  cry  as  wild  as  Miss 
Brown's,  was  in  the  sea  too,  and  had  reached  the 
drowning  woman,  and  had  caught  her  by  her  long 
black  hair  as  she  came  to  the  top,  and  was  keep- 
ing her  from  sinking,  or  trying  to  do  so,  when  the 
boat,  with  the  serving-man  and  Joe  and  Paul  in 
it,  appeared,  and  Miss  Brown  was  being  dragged 
ashore,  while  Hester  held  on  the  gunwale  till 
her  feet  felt  the  hard  sand,  for  there  was  not 


Charlotte  and  I,  after  every  one's  asleep  to-night."  _  PAGE  169. 


:  Hester  was  in  the  sea  too,  and  had  reached  the  drowning  woman."  —  I',u;i--   i;<V 


HESTEK   STANLEY   AT   ST.   MARKS.  177 

even  the  usual  roller  in   the   placid  land-locked 
bay. 

"  Are  you  going  to  tell  of  us,  Miss  Brown  ? " 
asked  Marcia,  as  soon  as  Miss  Brown  was  a  little 
restored ;  for  that  lady  had  not  become  insensible, 
for  all  her  sudden  bath. 

"What  a  widiculous  question!"  said  Miss  Brown, 
with  nearly  her  ancient  vigor,  and  although  her 
teeth  were  chattering  in  spite  of  the  warm  night, 
as  she  sat  upright,  after  a  little.  "To  be  sure  I 
am!  Do  you  suppose  I  cwept  out  over  all  the 
black  seams  and  fissures  in  those  wocks,  on  my 
hands  and  knees,  and  in  danger  of  my  life,  for 
nothing  ? " 

"  Well,  then,"  said  Marcia,  shrugging  her  shoul- 
ders, "  there 's  several  of  us,  and  perhaps  we  may 
as  well  make  an  end  of  her.  It's  a  pity  you 
would  n't  learn  to  swim,  Miss  Brown  ! " 

The  boys  laughed,  and  even  the  serving-man 
grinned;  but  Hester,  shivering  as  she  was  from 
head  to  foot  with  nervousness  and  reaction  and 
sudden  chill,  felt  herself  grow  hot  and  red  with 
anger  and  shame.  "Marcia,  Marcia!"  she  cried 
out.  ' 

12 


178  HESTER  STANLEY  AT   ST.    MARKS. 

"Don't  you  fwet,  Hester,"  said  Miss  Brown. 
"  When  I  get  up  to  the  Hall,  I  '11  soon  make  an 
end  of  her,  so  far  as  Waterways  is  concerned." 

"  Oh,  Miss  Brown,"  said  Marcia,  well  scared,  "  as 
if  one  could  n't  have  a  little  fun  ! " 

"Well,  you've  had  all  the  fun  you'll  have 
to-night.  You,  sir,"  turning  to  the  serving-man, 
"  take  those  boys  home  to  Mr.  Marquand  diwectly ! 
You  are  a  bad  man,  if  there  ever  was  one,  to 
betway  your  master  and  help  these  boys  do  wong, 
if  you  did  help  me  ashore.  If  you  had  n't  helped 
them  here,  I  should  n't  have  needed  to  be  helped 
ashore.  As  for  the  boys,  no  decent  boys  would 
be  guilty  of  such  behavior,  and  they  will  not  be 
allowed  inside  our  doors  again.  These  young 
ladies  —  be  quiet,  Miss  Meyer ! " 

"  Miss  Brown,  I  will  say  this,  if  you  kill  me ! 
Hester  was  n't  with  us.  She  would  n't  help  us. 
She  stole  out  after  us,  like  a  goose,  for  fear  we  'd 
be  drowned.  As  if  she  'd  have  been  'any  good,  if 
we  were  ! "  , 

"She  was  good  enough  to  save  my  life,"  said 
Miss  Brown,  "which  is  worth  more  than  the  whole 
thwee  of  you,  in  my  opinion,  and  I  shan't  forget  it 


HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MARKS.  179 

in  a  hurwy.  I  suppose  you'll  everwy  one  have 
the  doctor  to-morwow.  I  never  knew  anything  so 
outwageous  and  impwudent.  March  wight  before 
me  now,  diwectly  ! " 

"  Can't  we  swim,  Miss  Brown  ? "  asked  the 
Irrepressible,  —  for  Charlotte  and  Bella  were  en- 
tirely subdued,  and  in  tears. 

"  Swim !  If  you  go  into  the  water  again  this 
year,  it  will  be  because  to-night  is  a  dweam.  No ! 
You  will  cwawl  over  all  the  holes  and  cwacks  in 
the  wocks,  just  as  I  did.  As  for  you,  child,"  —  to 
Hester,  —  "I  shall  mark  out  all  your  demerwits 
and  forgive  you  ! "  And  Hester  felt  it  was  all  that 
could  be  expected  of  Miss  Brown,  —  as  we  almost 
always  either  dislike,  or  feel  we  must  forgive,  those 
we  have  injured.  And  then  Miss  Brown  mar- 
shalled the  girls  before  her,  Marcia  giving  a 
backward  wave  of  her  hand  to  Joe  all  the  same ; 
and  presently  she  increased  their  pace  into  a  run 
where  the  way  was  plain,  helping  Hester  over 
the  dark  and  dreadful  gullies  between  the  rocks, 
where  the  child  half  feared  to  see  the  head  of 
some  sea-monster  glancing,  and  finally  reaching 
the  house  all  glowing  with  the  rough  exercise. 


180  HESTER   STANLEY  AT   ST.    MARKS. 

"  I  'm  glad  you  're  all  so  warm  and  wosy,"  said 
Miss  Brown,  surveying  them  under  the  swinging 
lamp  that  burned  all  night.  "  But  if  the  punish- 
ment were  allowed  in  this  school,  I  would  make 
you  all  warmer  with  a  good  tingling  switch  ! " 

"  Miss  Brown,"  said  Marcia,  stepping  up  bravely, 
"  I  know  we  've  been  shameful,  and  I  think  we 
ought  to  be  punished,  —  but  —  but  —  you  know 
justice  is  best  tempered  with  mercy  ! " 

"  You  go  wight  to  bed,  you  impertinent  young 
sauce-box  ! "  cried  Miss  Brown.  "  And,  Hester, 
you  go  to  the  bath-woom  and  give  yourself  a 
bwisk  wubbing.  There 's  the  bell  stwiking  one 
o'clock !  It 's  perfectly  scandalous  ! " 

"  That 's  the  last  of  the  prize ! "  whispered  Mar- 
cia, as  they  slipped  away  together.  "That  delight- 
ful little  watch  has  gone  up  beyond  our  reach. 
We're  counted  out.  Just  think  of  Peggy  Payson's 
virtuous  airs !  We  shan't  hear  any  more  about 
to-night,  though.  Tell  ?  Oh,  of  course  she'll  tell! 
She  '11  bring  in  a  verdict  of  guilty,  with  a  recom- 
mendation to  mercy,  and  Miss  Marks  will  read  us 
Jephthah's  daughter,  or  Herodias's  daughter,  or 
the  centurion's  daughter,  or  — " 


HESTER   STANLEY  AT   ST.   MARKS.  181 

"Oh,  Marcia!"  sobbed  Hester,  "I'm  afraid 
you  're  going  to  be  a  very  bad  girl ! " 

Marcia  looked  at  Hester,  and  skipped  along  a 
few  steps,  turned  to  look  at  her  again,  and  then 
ran  back  and  threw  her  arms  about  her.  "I'll 
never  say  another  naughty  thing  as  long  as  I  live, 
you  poor  little  image ! "  cried  Marcia,  in  a  burst  of 
repentance  and  tears.  And  Miss  Brown,  who  had 
heard  it  all,  did  n't  saj  a  word,  when  she  parted 
the  curtain  of  that  dormitory  alcove,  and  saw 
Hester  and  Marcia  saying  their  prayers  together, 
on  their  knees  beside  Marcia's  bed  that  night, 
whether  it  was  against  the  rules  or  not. 


182  HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.   MARKS. 


CHAPTEE  XIV. 


rT^EEM  was  to  close  in  a  fortnight  ;  and  what  a 
busy  time  that  fortnight  was  !  What  with 
the  reviewing  of  exercises,  the  rubbing  up  of  half- 
forgotten  lessons,  the  rehearsal  of  exhibition  parts, 
the  making  out  of  records,  it  seemed  as  if  such 
an  orderly  and  industrious  hive  were  never  seen. 
More  than  once  Miss  Brown  was  heard  to  exclaim 
that  she  wished  it  was  always  two  weeks  before 
term-closing,  in  spite  of  the  heat. 

But  then  Miss  Brown  herself  was  going  about 
with  a  smile  on  her  face  that  nobody  knew  how  to 
account  for.  "  I  should  think  she  had  been  made 
over,"  said  Marcia,  who  had  not  yet  learned  the 
humanizing  effect  of  happiness.  "  But  there,"  she 
added  with  a  sigh,  as  if  it  cost  her  a  pang,  never- 
theless, "  I  promised  Hester  I  would  n't  say  any- 
thing naughty  again,  and  I  suppose  I  must  keep 


HESTER   STANLEY  AT   ST.   MAKES.  183 

my  word.     What  a  nuisance  a  conscience  is !     It 
seems  as  if  everything  I  wanted  to  say  was  bad." 

As  she  spoke,  she  was  tying  her  broad  white  sash 
over  her  white  muslin  gown ;  for,  foolishly  sensi- 
tive about  her  red  hair,  which  she  did  not  know 
it  was  the  fashion  for  poets  and  artists  to  admire, 
Marcia  would  never  willingly  wear  any  bright 
colors,  and  this  was  the  great  day  of  all  when 
every  girl  was  fain  to  look  her  best. 

"  What  do  you  think,  girls  ? "  she  said.  "  I  want 
you  to  look  for  yourselves,  and  see  if  Margaret 
Payson  has  n't  made  a  little  pocket  for  that  watch 
in  her  gown.  I  hope  to  die,  if  she  has  n't !  Dear, 
dear,  I  wish  there  'd  never  been  any  prize  offered, 
—  it's  going  to  make  us  all  so  envious  and  ill- 
natured." 

"  Some  of  us  were  so  before,"  said  Fanny  Doane. 

"  Oh,  certainly,"  began  Marcia,  turning  on  her, 
but  whisking  away  and  clapping  her  hand  on  her 
mouth.  "  There  I  go  again  ! " 

"  I  don't  feel  envious  about  it,"  said  Bella. 
"I'd  just  as  lief — almost  as  lief  —  you  had  it, 
March." 

"Well,  I  hadn't  as  lief  you  had  it.  I  can't  be 
as  good  as  the  rest  of  you,  and  it 's  of  no  use  try- 


184  HESTER   STANLEY  AT  ST.   MARKS. 

ing.  I  'd  like  it  myself.  It  makes  me  angry  to 
think  I  might  have  had  it.  However,  I  don't  sup- 
pose any  of  us  three  would  have  got  it,  if  we 
had  n't  gone  out  to  the  Long  Point.  So  I  'm  glad 
we  've  had  that,  any  way  ! " 

"  I  would  n't  be  glad,  Marcia,"  said  Hester,  in  a 
low  tone. 

"  Why  not,  pray  ? " 

"It  was  wrong.  And  it  nearly  killed  Miss 
Brown,  and  —  and  me.  And  just  think  if  it 
had  ! " 

"  I  'd  never  have  had  any  peace  again.  Should 
I?" 

"And  it  lost  the  man  his  place,  I  suppose. 
And  it  disgraced  the  two  boys  so  that  I  don't 
believe  they  '11  be  allowed  to  come  —  " 

"  You  're  a  regular  little  missionary,  Hester. 
You  have  n't  mistaken  your  calling.  But  it 's  no 
use;  you  can't  make  anything  out  of  me.  I 
should  n't  wonder  if  I  was  really  good  for  nothing. 
I  ought  to  be  sorry.  I  know  it  was  wrong.  But 
—  but  —  we  had  a  good  time  ! " 

"There  go  the  bells!"  said  Charlotte.  And 
presently  the  white- clad  lassies  were  filing  into 
the  great  audience-room  that  was  already  crowded 


HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MARKS.  185 

with  the  trustees  and  the  invited  guests,  the  select- 
men of  the  little  town  beyond,  and  the  school- 
committee-men,  the  fathers  and  mothers  and 
friends  of  many  of  the  girls,  and  Mr.  Marquand, 
and  his  tutors,  and  all  his  boys,  not  forgetting  Joe 
and  Paul,  who  had  contrived  to  get  a  front  seat, 
close  to  the  platform. 

How  warm  the  air  was!  How  delicious  was 
the  breath  of  the  innumerable  flowers  with  which 
the  room  was  hung !  How  like  flowers  them- 
selves were  the  fresh  young  faces  of  the  girls ! 
How  sweet  were  the  clear  voices  that  sang  the 
hymns  !  How  glibly  Margaret  Payson  rattled  off 
her  theorems  and  her  chemical  formulas,  and  how 
proud  of  her  was  Miss  Brown  !  How  furiously 
Hester's  heart  beat  when  Marcia,  who  knew  the 
whole  Latin  Ode  by  heart,  tripped  and  quavered 
and  paused,  and  turned  red  and  redder,  and  would 
have  made  an  ignominious  failure,  if  a  sharp, 
swift  whisper  from  Joe  had  not  struck  her  ear  and 
sent  her  safely  forward  ! 

Years  afterward,  when  Hester  was  a  woman  of 
wealth  and  authority,  at  the  head  of  a  corps  of 
teachers,  bringing  her  islanders  up  into  the  light, 
as  she  called  it,  and  coming  every  few  summers  to 


186  HESTEK   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MARKS. 

visit  Marcia  and  Joe,  she  remembered  that  terrible 
moment  when  Marcia  hesitated  and  paused,  with 
all  that  swarm  of  faces,  and  that  breathless  silence, 
save  for  the  fluttering  of  the  fans,  waiting  on  her 
words.  Her  heart  did  not  beat  half  as  fast,  nor 
was  the  moment  anything  so  terrible,  when  she 
herself  went  up  for  a  reading-exercise  with  the 
"  Sea  Fairies." 

The  lessons  had  all  been  recited  at  last,  the  es- 
says read,  the  topic  discussed,  the  duets  played,  the 
valedictory  delivered  with  all  Margaret's  best  dig- 
nity and  grace ;  and  then,  as  the  trustees  and  a 
few  other  gentlemen  went  upon  the  low  platform, 
Miss  Marks  herself  came  forward  there,  to  meet 
them,  and  to  deliver  the  prize. 

She  also  wore  white  muslin,  with  a  good  deal  of 
lace  about  it.  What  a  perfect-looking  thing  she 
was,  Hester  thought,  as  she  watched  her  slow  and 
gracious  ways ;  St.  Theresa  ought  to  have  looked 
just  so,  as  Marcia  had  often  said.  If  that  little 
gold  band  in  her  gold  hair  were  only  just  outside 
her  head  instead,  like  the  halo  in  the  pictures, 
then  she  could  n't  help  looking  like  a  saint.  And 
while  Miss  Marks  was  speaking,  Hester  had  be- 
come lost  in  all  these  fancies,  and  started  as  if  she 


HESTER   STANLEY  AT   ST.   MARKS.  187 

had  been  stung — sure  she  had  been  doing  some- 
thing wrong  —  when  suddenly  Miss  Marks  spoke 
her  name. 

"  Oh,  if  you  please  —  I  did  n't  know  —  I  won't 
again  ! "  she  was  half  whispering,  half  saying  aloud, 
thinking  it  was  all  because  of  her  wandering  at- 
tention. Then  she  stopped  in  dismay,  seeing  Miss 
Brown  edging  her  way  towards  her,  and  nodding 
to  her  like  a  Chinese  mandarin  at  the  door  of  a 
tea-store.  The  concluding  sentence,  however,  of 
what  Miss  Marks  really  said,  was  this :  — 

"And  so,  in  view  of  all  the  circumstances,  of 
the  fact  that  when  she  came  she  could  not  write 
at  all,  and  now  writes  freely  and  well ;  could  read 
only  with  difficulty,  and  you  have  all  heard  in 
what  manner  she  reads  now;  had  never  committed 
to  memory  from  a  printed  page,  and  has  never 
failed  in  a  recitation ;  possessed  an  unlimited  pride, 
and  has  become  so  humble  that  she  will  be  more 
astonished  than  any  one  when  her  name  is  called ; 
had  a  wild  and  uncontrolled  temper,  and  has 
acquired  such  mastery  of  it  that  she  makes  no 
retort  to  sneers  and  takes  no  revenge  for  abuse; 
not  to  speak  of  the  fact  that  she  endeavored  to 
save  the  life  of  one  whom  she  felt  to  be  her  worst 


188  HESTEK   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MARKS. 

enemy  at  the  very  moment  of  injury,  —  in  view, 
then,  of  her  general  excellence  in  deportment  and 
scholarship,  as  she  reaches  in  both  the  rank  of 
one  hundred,  where  nobody  else  reaches  ninety, 
I  adjudge  the  prize  to  —  Hester  Stanley." 

And  then  Miss  Brown  was  whispering  to  Hester, 
and  beckoning  her,  and  lifting  her,  and  pushing 
her,  and  Miss  Park  was  leading  her,  and  she  was 
standing  on  the  platform  before  Miss  Marks  and 
those  gentlemen,  and  Miss  Marks  was  holding  out 
the  watch  and  chain  to  her,  —  Hester  Stanley. 

"  Oh,  if  you  please,"  said  Hester  again,  looking 
up  for  half  a  second  and  speaking  in  a  low  and 
hurried  voice,  trembling  from  head  to  foot,  and 
her  cheeks  stained  like  an  autumn  leaf;  "you  can't 
mean  me,  you  know  !  It  is  n't  I  at  all  —  " 

"Indeed,  I  do  mean  you!"  said  Miss  Marks 
loudly  and  clearly.  "Most  assuredly  it  is  you! 
And  the  watch  is  yours." 

But  Hester  shrank  back  as  she  would  have 
thrown  the  chain  around  her  neck. 

"  Oh,  don't  you  be  vexed  with  me,  Miss  Marks, 
dear  Miss  Marks ! "  she  said ;  "  but  you  know  I 
could  n't  take  it.  It  does  n't  belong  to  me.  It's  a 
dreadful  mistake !  I  don't  believe  you  remem- 


HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MARKS.  189 

bered  that  I  'm  only  in  fractions,  and  the  big  girls 
are  —  " 

"  My  dear  child,"  said  Miss  Marks,  "  that  has 
nothing  to  do  with  it.  Spherical  trigonometry  is 
as  easy  to  the  '  big  girls '  as  fractions  are  to  you. 
And  you  are  perfect  in  fractions,  and  they  are  not 
perfect  in  trigonometry." 

"  It  is  the  similitude  of  the  laborers  in  the  vine- 
yard at  the  eleventh  hour,"  murmured  one  of  the 
trustees,  —  the  fat  one  behind  whom  a  tall,  dark 
gentleman  was  standing,  and  blowing  his  nose 
like  a  trumpet. 

"  Miss  Marks,"  said  Hester,  then  firmly,  but  in 
the  same  low  voice,  looking  straight  before  her,  for 
all  that  multitude  of  circling  faces  seemed  to  her 
like  the  clouds  of  cherubs'  heads  in  Miss  Marks's 
engravings  of  the  Madonna,  and  she  knew  it  would 
be  just  the  same  at  the  Judgment  Day,  "I  beg 
your  pardon,  but  you  know  I  shall  never  take  the 
watch.  A  little  dunce  like  me  !  I  should  feel 
like  a  thief.  And  I  know  you  don't  wish  to  make 
me  unhappy." 

Miss  Marks  laughed,  although  she  was  dis- 
turbed. "Very  well!"  she  said,  after  a  moment's 
thought,  while  all  the  audience  were  still  as  if  it 


190  HESTER   STANLEY  AT   ST.    MARKS. 

were  a  scene  at  a  play.  "  I  see  that  you  are  in  ear- 
nest, and  I  will  not  distress  you ;  but  the  watch  is 
yours.  That  I  cannot  hinder.  And  as  you  do  not 
seem  to  think  good  behavior  and  perfect  recita- 
tions of  such  worth  as  to  deserve  a  prize,  you  may 
give  it  to  that  young  lady  whose  mere  scholarship 
you  know  to  be  the  best.  I  leave  it  to  you." 
And  she  put  the  watch  in  her  hands. 

Hester  hesitated  still,  and  looked  up  at  Miss 
Marks  once  more,  with  her  great  dark  eyes  as 
appealing  as  a  dumb  animal's.  "  Must  I  ? "  she 
said.  And  Miss  Marks  bowed. 

Then  Hester  turned  and  looked  at  the  girls. 
These  had  been  her  friends ;  those  had  jeered  her ; 
she  did  not  think  of  that. 

There  was  Marcia  turning  red  and  white  with 
excitement;  and  Marcia  did  wish  for  it  so,  and 
she  would  so  like  to  please  her  sick  mother  now 
that  it  was  too  late  perhaps ;  and  Eafe  would  be  so 
glad ;  and  she  herself  longed  so  to  hold  it  out  to 
Marcia ;  and  she  so  hated  to  let  her  rival  triumph 
over  her.! 

Hester  looked  at  her  again ;  and  then  the  great 
tears  swelled  and  gushed  over  her  eyes. 

"  Oh,  I  want  to  give  it  to  Marcia ! "  she  cried. 


HESTER    STANLEY    AT    ST.    MARKS.  191 

"  I  want  to  give  it  to  Marcia !  But  the  watch 
belongs  to  Margaret ! " 

And  she  extended  her  hand  to  Margaret,  who 
was  on  the  spot  almost  as  soon  as  her  name  was 
uttered,  and  who  bent  her  long,  white  neck  to  the 
glittering  chain,  coolly  adjusted  it,  and  slipped  the 
watch  into  the  little  pocket  that  had  been  waiting 
for  it,  while  a  slight  ripple  of  proper  applause  ran 
through  the  general  audience,  and  the  girls,  admir- 
ing her  self-possession,  and  forgiving  all  her  ill- 
nature,  for  the  time  being,  in  consideration  of  her 
success,  clapped  their  hands  till  it  sounded  like  the 
flight  of  a  flock  of  doves  from  the  roof. 

And  then  Hester,  running  to  take  refuge  from 
her  conflicting  emotions  with  Miss  Marks,  felt  her- 
self clasped,  half-way,  by  something  very  different 
from  Miss  Marks's  embrace,  and  with  a  wild,  glad 
cry,  found  herself  in  her  father's  arms. 

"  He  'd  been  wrecked,"  said  Marcia  that  even- 
ing to  her  own  select  audience,  the  evening  being 
given  them  before  they  parted  for  the  long  vaca- 
tion ;  "  he  'd  been  wrecked  and  cast  on  an  island, 
and  lived  on  shell-fish,  in  spite  of  all  his  princely 
possessions  in  the  South  Seas,  and  taken  off  at  last 
and  brought  into  Valparaiso  — 


192  HESTER   STANLEY   AT    ST.    MARKS. 

"  Hester's  father  had  ! "  exclaimed  Charlotte. 

"Yes,  and  he  had  that  letter  sent,  that  letter 
which  Brownie  flirted  into  the  water,  to  tell  of 
it ;  and  he  was  taken  ill  and  could  n't  follow  it 
before." 

"  Did  Miss  Marks  know  he  was  there,  I  won- 
der?" 

"  No,  indeed.  He  sat  behind  the  pillar,  and  Mr. 
Globe,  who  is  as  big  as  the  gates  of  Gaza,  stood 
^before  him  on  the  platform.  I  rather  think  he 
cried  a  little  ;  he  was  using  a  handkerchief  as  big 
as  a  flag  of  truce.  Does  n't  he  look  like  Hester  ? " 

"Mr.  Globe?" 

"  Pshaw !  Mr.  Stanley.  He  said  that  to  find 
Hester  what  she  is,  to  be  present  at  that  scene, 
was  worth  all  he  had  suffered.  The  little  dear! 
Did  n't  she  want  to  give  the  watch  to  me  ?  The 
little  Brutus !  I  declare,  to  see  her  father  «take 
her  in  his  arms  was  prize  enough  for  me !  For, 
do  you  know,  I  really  think  Margaret  Payson  de- 
served the  watch.  She 's  delved  for  it,  while  we've 
played.  She  preferred  the  watch,  and  we  preferred 
the  play.  So  that 's  all  square." 

"  Well,"  said  Bella,  "  my  average,  taking  behav- 


HESTER    STANLEY   AT    ST.    -MARKS.  193 

ior  in,  is  as  good  as  Margaret's.  But  I  suppose 
she  is  the  best  scholar  of  us  all." 

"And  wasn't  the  whole  thing  just  in  character 
for  St.  Marks?  And  didn't  I  always  tell  you 
what  she  was  ?  She  's  like  Providence,  that  cares 
for  a  sparrow  as  much  —  as  much  as  it  does  for 
me  ! "  cried  Marcia,  with  her  gayest  laugh.  "I  'ni 
so  glad  I  'm  coming  back  next  year ;  perhaps  she  '11 
make  a  saint  of  me  before  she  gets  through  with 
me.  She  's  a  saint  herself!  " 

"  Well,  if  she 's  in  that  business,"  said  Bella,  "  I 
wish  she  'd  begin  with  Miss  Brown  !  " 

"  Oh,  I  forgot ! "  cried  Marcia,  springing  up 
and  dancing  about  the  room.  "  Say !  Do  you 
know  Brownie's  sister  is  coming  here  to  teach,  — 
the  lame  one?  St.  Marks  is  going  through  that 
whole  Brown  family,  just  because  nobody  else 
will !  And  now  you  may  have  one  guess  apiece 
as  to  the  reason  why  she 's  coming.  I  declare,  I  've 
just  the  best  thing  to  tell  you,  the  very  richest 
thing!  You'll  never  guess,  —  it's  better  than  a 
prize,  any  day.  Did  n't  she  look  nice  in  her  gray 
silk?  And  hasn't  she  modified?  Well,  — what 
do  you  think?  Brownie's  going  to  be  married! 
13 


194 


HESTER   STANLEY   AT   ST.    MAKKS. 


She  really  is,  —  married  to  Mr.  Marquand.  He 
says  he  never  saw  such  devotion  to  duty  as  hers 
that  night  at  Long  Point.  And  so  St.  Marks  has 
seen  the  last  of  her, — for  of  course  she's  going 
over  there  to  live.  Poor  Joe  and  Paul ! " 


University  Press  :  John  Wilson  &  Son,  Cambridge. 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 

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This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below. 


RECTO  10-URC 

SEP  02  1986 

AUG  11 


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REC'D 

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